Prologue

Good governance is essential in every society as it underlines progress. Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) support the process of good governance. In the past decade, governments all over the world have discovered the use of technologies for engaging citizens to participate in governance as well as facilitate good governance. Numerous initiatives have been undertaken by the partnership of private sector and governments, as the use of ICTs have accentuated transparency in governments and empowered citizens. The use of ICTs in governance has lead to the growth of the paradigm better known as e-governance.

Lately, to extend the delivery of e-governance, the use of cloud computing has been explored by many governments around the world. Cloud based governance is regarded as a platform for sustainable inclusive growth, particularly in developing nations where the reach needs to be extend to every citizen and upfront costs need to be low. Cloud computing is a delivery mechanism for e-governance services and every nation is gearing to leverage this platform for sustainable growth.

This book contains 33 papers that reflect the progress of e-governance in terms of conceptual frameworks, innovations, implementation and evaluations of existing policies and practices as the paradigm reaches the state of cloud based delivery. We believe that this book will be beneficial to academia to further research, governments to evaluate policies and implement best practices; and industry sectors to consider innovations, for a cloud-ready e-governance services.

Chandana Unnithan Bardo Fraunholz

About the Editors:

Chandana Unnithan is currently an academic in Project Management and Information Systems Management with Deakin University, Australia. She holds degrees in Computer Science from India, an MBA and MBusComp (by research) from Australia. She has held varied positions in the ICT industry for 8 years, ranging from Project Manager and Knowledge Manager with leading organisations such as IBM, TATA and research organisations such as CDOT, IMRB. She has published widely from e-commerce, project management, mobile business applications, information systems, health informatics and e-governance. Her major research interests are in application of mobile information systems in business and government for process improvements and the Influence of Social media tools in business and government. She has special interest in e-governance using social media tools to improve citizen participation and the utilisation of cloud based delivery for e-governance.

Chandana's interest in e-governance research began with an invited (and acclaimed) paper at the Oxford University in 2002. She has been interviewed and had media appearances for e-governance via newspapers and television. She has won many best paper awards and is a member of International Congress for e-governance. In 2012, she is co-chairing the 9th International Conference on Electronic Governance, in Cochin, India.
Bardo Fraunholz is currently an academic in Project Management and Information Systems with Deakin University, Australia. He holds Professional Business Degree in Information Systems and Accounting (University of Trier, Germany) and GradDip in Legal studies specialising in IT, Media & Corporate Law from London (UK).

He has lectured in the University of Koblenz, Germany, in enterprise modelling, project management, small business and knowledge management. He spent several years in the ICT sector managing/consulting with a number of projects involving mobile applications, SMEs, and e-learning. His research interests are in Mobile applications, e-learning technologies, e-governance, Web 2.0 and environment sustainability. Bardo has a special interest in electronic governance, particularly philosophical approaches to citizen empowerment and inclusive governance. He has appeared in the media and won accolades for many published papers in e-governance. He is Conference Co-Chair for the 9th International Conference on Electronic Governance, held in Cochin, India.

DISCLAIMER: The authors are solely responsible for the contents of the papers compiled in this volume. The publishers or editors do not take any responsibility for the same in any manner. Errors, if any, are purely unintentional and readers are requested to communicate such errors to the editors or publishers to avoid discrepancies in future.

II

Acknowledgements The editors would like to thank the following persons for their valuable contributions towards this publication. Advisory Prof. M P Gupta, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi (India) Prof. Ashok Agarwal, Chairman EWB India; Adjunct professor BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Dr Satish Babu, President CSI, Director ICFOSS at Trivandrum, Kerala. Major Gen R K Bagga, Chairman CSI SIG eGovernance, Advisor (Outreach Div), IIIT Gachibowli Hyderabad, India Reviews Ajit N Babu, Centre for Advancement of Global Health , India Arunabha Mukhopadhyay, Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow, (India) Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai (India) Atanu Ghosh, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai (India) Banwet DK, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi (India) Bardo Fraunholz, Deakin University, Melbourne (Australia) Bernard Menezes, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai (India) Cecilia Junio-Sabio, Polytechnic University of the Philippines, Manila, (Philippines) Chandana Unnithan, Deakin University (Australia) Chandra B, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi (India) Charles Kaylor, Public Sphere Information Group, Newtonville (USA) Clay Wescott, Asian Development Bank, Manila, (Philippines) Deshmukh SG, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi (India) Dibakar Ray, National Informatics Center, New Delhi (India) Donald F. Norris, University of Maryland, Baltimore (USA) Edgardo Herbosa, CEO - b2bpricenow.com, (Philippines) Geetha Bala M R, Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning,India Gopalakrishnan C, Director, Institute of Management, Nirma University, Ahmedabad (India) Gregory G. Curtin, University of Southern California, Los Angeles (USA) Gupta DN, Government of Orissa, India Gupta MP, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi (India) Gupta SK, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi (India) Hsin-Ginn Hwang, National Chung Cheng University, Ming-Hsiung, Chia-Yi, (Taiwan) Hsi-Peng Lu, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (Taiwan) Jaijit Bhattachgarya, Sun Microsystems, (India) Jalote Pankaj, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi, (India) Jatinder N. D. (Jeet) Gupta, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville (USA) Jha HM "Bidyarthi", Shri Sant Gajanan Maharaj College of Engineering, Shegaon (India) John Carlo Bertot, Florida State University, Tallahassee (USA) John Mylonakis, Hellenic Open University, (Greece) Kalu, Kalu N., Emporia State University, Emporia, (Kansas) Ken Banks, CEO - Kiwanja.net, (UK) Kiran Karnik, New Delhi (India) Krishnaiah VSR, Head,e-Governance Standards Division at National Informatics Centre, New Delhi, (India) III

Marc Holzer, Rutgers University, (USA) Milagros (Millie) Rivera, National University of Singapore, (Singapore) Nachman ORON, IT Supreme Committee, Government of Israel, (Israel) Nagadevara V, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, Bangalore, (India) Nicolae Costake, Certified Management Consultant Bucharest, (Romania) Nicolaos Protogeros, University of Macedonia , Thessaloniki, (Greece) Nitin Arora, IESE Barcelona, (Spain) Nityesh Bhatt, Institute of Management, Nirma University, Ahmedabad (India) Panayiotis Tahinakis, University of Macedonia,Thessaloniki, (Greece) Pradeep Kumar Garg, NMIMS University, Mumbai, (India) Radhakumari (Chi), Department of Management and Commerce, Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning,India Rajiv Arora, (PhD IIT-D), Joint Director General Of Foreign Trade, Ministry Of Commerce, Government Of India Rowena Cullen, Victoria University of Wellington, (New Zealand) Sahu GP, M N National Institute of Technology, Allahabad (India) Saxena KBC, Management Development Institute, Gurgaon (India) Seang-Tae Kim, SungKyunKwan University, Seoul, (Korea) Shafay Shamail, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore, (Pakistan) Shirin Madon, London School of Economics, London (UK) Shivraj Kanungo, The George Washington University, Washington DC (USA) Siddhartha Tiwari, Google India (India) Sreejith Alathur, National Institute of Technology Calicut, Kerala India. Stan Kachnowski, Columbia University, New York (USA) Sunil Godse, Richard Ivey School of Business, Toronto, (Canada) Susanne Strahringer, European Business School, Oestrich Winkel (Germany) Sushil, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi (India) Tawfik Jelassi, School of International Management, Paris. (France) Teo Sian Hin, Thompson, National University of Singapore, (Singapore) Venkatesan VS, University of Western Australia, Crawley (Australia) Vivek Singhal, CMC , Strategic Business Management Co., Oak Brook, (USA) Waltraut Ritter, Knowledge Dialogues, Hong Kong Yi-Shun Wang, National Changhua University of Education, (Taiwan) Yogesh K. Dwivedi, Swansea University, Wales, (U K)

Technical Support Vimal Kumar, Indian Institute of Technology - Delhi, New Delhi, India

ICEG 2012 Conference Conveners /Host Institution: Dr. GPC Nayar, Chairman, SCMS-Cochin, India Dr. Raman Nair, Director, SCMS-Cochin, India, Professor Indu Nair, Director, SCMS-Cochin, India

IV

Contents
1. A Framework for Government Control over Sensitive Information in Outsourced eGovernance Projects Raghu Ramakrishnan and Gopal Sharma Enterprise Architecture Framework and Cloud Models for Rapid Replication Tanmay Narang and Rajesh Narang Beowulf Cluster: Cost Effective Solution for E-Governance AmarJeet Singh, Rajesh Chauhan, and Balvir Singh Thakur Theme: Conceptual Frameworks in eGovernance Transforming Service Delivery with Information Exchange Enablers Praful Gharpure Enterprise Suite for Panchayats Rama Hariharan and Deepak Chandra Misra Survey on Various Initiatives and Challenges of Mobile based Public Services in India Ranjan Kumar, Manish Kumar, Kapil Kant Kamal, Zia Saquib, Kavita Bhatia Heuristic Evaluation of E-Government Portal of India (india.gov.in) Sandeep Kaur Shared Service for E-Governance Saket Gupta and Sanjog Ray Applications of Text Mining in E-Governance Prakash B R, Hanumanthappa M, and Mallamma V Reddy Uses of VoIP in E-governanace Manish Mahant Manikpuri and Sapna Choudhary Education Technology in Digital Age - A study on Classroom learning for future DM Arvind Mallik Identification of Critical Infrastructure Sectors of India and their Interdependency Abhishek Narain Singh, M P Gupta and Amitabh Ojha Understanding Common and Specific applications of E-Government: A Case from India VelamalaRangaRao Necessity of Quality Assurance in e-Governance Projects Pabitrananda Patnaik, Susanta Kumar Panda and Manas Ranjan Projects Assessment of Universities portals in Haryana Subhash Chander Jaglan, Ashwani Kush and Sharmila Devi Jaglan Challenges for Adoption of Secured Effective E-governance through Virtualization and Cloud Computing Amit Joshi The Maturity of E-government Websites in the Republic of Yemen Asma Al-Hashmi, Suresha, and A. Basit Darem A GIS Based e-Governance Solution for School Mapping and Educational Micro-Planning a Case Study of the State of Maharashtra, India Nirav Shah and Amrutaunshu Nerurkar Access and Awareness of Mobile Market Information Services for Market Linkages among farmers in Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India Senthil Priya .P and Mathiyalagan N. 1

2.

3. 4.

18 23

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

29 40 47 55 62 68 72 81 96 117 126 135

17. 18.

143 150

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162

20. 21.

Technologies Implemented for E-governance Ayush Sharma Conceptual Model of citizens intention to use municipal web portal services: Citizens Perspective. P. Devika and N. Mathiyalagan Adaption to change from District Magistrate to District Manager: Catalytic role of DM eDashboard Application (DMDA) Gopal Meena Open Government Data : More than Eighty Formats Neeta Verma and M P Gupta Tracking the Sociotechnical Barriers to Digital Identity Adoption in Arab Countries A Case Study of Qatar Divakaran Liginlal, Daniel Phelps, and Lansine Kaba An Empirical Analysis of the Diffusion, Adoption and the Future of ICT Mediated egovernance in Kerala: The FRIENDS Project A Critical Review Prasanth Koothoor, C.Pichandy, T.Padmanabhan, R.Jayaseelan, and Natchimuthu Munusamy Financial Services for bankless villages a facet of Financial Inclusion: the succeeding tale in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka Ch. Radhakumari and M.R. Geetha Bala Portability of Entitlements in Public Distribution through COREPDS in Chhattisgarh A.K.Somasekhar and M.K.Mishra e-Governance Service Discovery Framework Zia Saquib and Swapnil Shrivastava Swara: Broadcasting Tribal Voice on Mobile Pradeep Nair Keralas Rural Empowerment And Social Up gradation By Akahaya Project Bindu N Natarajan Transforming E-governance through Cloud computing architecture: Select Case Studies Samarth Arora A Validated Citizen-Centric Approach using Delphi Technique For Converging Indigenous Knowledge Systems using ICT Charru Malhotra,V.M.Chariar and L.K. Das LeanERP Mobile Platform Solution for Planning, Visualization and Execution of Business Operations in MSME units

176 185

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27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

252 264 273 278 283 289

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301

K. Jayakumar

VI

A Framework for Government Control over Sensitive Information in Outsourced e-Governance Projects
Raghu Ramakrishnan 1 * and Gopal Sharma1 ABSTRACT The effective implementation of e-governance projects in India is being brought about by partnering with private organizations under the public private partnership mode. This model in turn has thrown up a number of challenges related to misuse or accidental disclosure of information to an unauthorized party. This paper describes a framework to ensure that the government department retains control over sensitive information in outsourced e-governance projects. The framework also introduces a mechanism to ensure traceability and accountability of users. Keywords: e-governance, strategic control, service provider, mission mode project 1. Introduction Government services in India are being offered in electronic mode as part of the national e-governance program [1]. The proposed national e-governance plan (NeGP) comprises of a wide range of citizen services under the umbrella of 27 mission mode projects (MMPs). The transformation of government service delivery is not only a good option to reach the public but an essential requirement for driving the overall socio-economic growth. As part of e-governance program, documents, forms, instructions, general information and services are being provided by government departments at the central and state level, to the people through websites accessible over the Internet. The government paper on guidelines for strategic control in outsourced projects looks at a larger role of the Industry for faster and effective implementation of e-governance projects [2]. This involves engaging private organizations (referred to as service providers) in areas like, - Preliminary data collection and processing related to service requests - Setting up and maintaining the Information Technology infrastructure This growth in involvement of private players in Public Private Partnership mode (PPP) and extensive use of Information Technology for providing timely, easy and transparent service delivery to people has thrown up new security challenges. The smooth functioning of the complex IT setup requires specialized roles like network service provider, system integration team, administrators in the area of storage, server, network, middleware and databases. These critical roles are usually staffed by engineers of the service provider. This has led to an increasing need towards ensuring that the sensitive information provided by people does not fall prey to misuse or accidental disclosure to an unauthorized party. Examples of sensitive information include personal particulars, financial information, criminal data etc. It needs to be realized that the primary role of any government department is service delivery to people like issue of a ration card, license, passport, registration of a company etc. IT is purely an enabling activity. The program management organization of the concerned government department often faces
1

Tata Consultancy Services, India * Corresponding Author: (Email: raghuramakrishnan71@gmail.com, Telephone: +91-9810607820)

Towards E-governance in the Cloud

issues like continuity and shortage of technically skilled personnel to effectively exercise control over the service provider. This in turn may lead to a dilution of strategic control of the government department over the information assets. This paper describes a technical framework for enabling the government department to exercise strategic control over its information systems and assets in e-governance programs executed using the public private partnership model. The framework consists of a set of controls which can be implemented in the area of information storage and processing. Though strategic control is to be exercised over the entire life cycle of the project, the specified controls become more applicable during the operations and maintenance stage. 2. Typical E-Governance Project Landscape E-governance projects implemented in PPP mode involve multiple stakeholders, applications and IT infrastructure as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1 The landscape of a typical e-governance project landscape. A. Government Department - The primary Government Department owns the data and services that are be used by citizens, internal users or other government departments. An example of government department may be Income Tax, Police, Passport etc. B. Other Government Departments - Other government departments may access services or data provided by the primary Government department or vice versa. For example the retrieving details about a PAN. C. Service Provider - An organisation or a group of organisations that possess resources and expertise to provide the required services to the primary Government department or its users within the given framework. The Service provider provides support services such as business operations, call center, helpdesk, technical support, application support and database support etc. D. IT Assets Information Technology assets enable the government department to render the necessary services to its users or other departments. The department may own the assets or use a shared platform. These are also referred to as part of strategic assets which require control by the Government department [2]. IT assets may include the following: - IT infrastructure The IT infrastructure may include the data center, disaster recovery center, servers, storage, network and networking devices, workstations, peripherals etc. - Data Store The data store may contain databases and document repositories. - Software Applications - It may include the middleware and the off the shelf or custom developed application software providing the necessary services.

Raghu Ramakrishnan et al. / A Framework for Government Control over Sensitive Information in Outsourced e-Governance Projects

Such a landscape which includes a private service provider poses multiple challenges related to maintaining privacy of data related to people and effective control of the government department over the activities of the service provider which deals with such data. This is to ensure that such data does not fall prey to misuse or accidental disclosure to an unauthorized party. 3. Proposed Technical Controls The objective of the proposed framework is to provide a set of well-defined technical controls at the data tier for ensuring, - Effective control of the government department over the integrity and confidentiality of sensitive data. - Traceability and non-repudiation of actions carried by users of the system. The framework is based on principles of minimum privileges and trust, traceability and accountability of actions. Fig.1 shows the scope of this framework.

Fig. 2 The scope of this framework is restricted to the data tier, activity and database audit log. A. Controls on the Database Business applications use a database in their data tier for storage of information. This database may contain sensitive information submitted by people or created as part of the processing by the government department. Controls are required to ensure that access to such sensitive information in the database is available to authorized roles only. The database users can be classified under two classes Basic and Power Users. Basic Users include user ids used internally by applications to connect to the database (a JNDI configuration used by a J2EE application for accessing a database is an example of a user id used internally by a web application) and application support users. The application support users are users performing production support activity. These users have read permission on one or more tables in the database and access the tables using the SQL prompt or a tool like Toad for Oracle. Power Users include database instance owners and database administrators. Power users carry out following types of activities on a database. 3

Towards E-governance in the Cloud

Monitoring the database health or maintenance like updating statistics, backups, generating an SQL statement plan for optimization etc. Changes to structure or content of data like creating/modifying a database object, assigning/removing permissions, data fixes (which are typically required to correct incorrect data resulting from an application defect), upgrades etc.

The application or power users (during data fixes) insert, delete or update data in database tables. Therefore it is essential to retain a pre-image of updated or deleted data to ensure traceability of changes to data. The framework proposes adherence to the following technical controls at the database tier. - Control 1: All SQL statements executed by application support users and power users must be recorded in the database audit log. - Control 2: The passwords of the user ids used internally by applications and power users shall be in split mode part of the password shall be with the service provider and the other part with the personnel of the technical team from the government department. - Control 3: All critical tables shall have a shadow table (called audit table) which captures the preimage of a record using an update and delete trigger. - Control 4: Use a database view to control access of the application support users to columns of a table [3]. B. Controls on the Documents E-governance projects have people submitting forms and scanned copies of documents like date of birth, address proof, education proof etc. These documents are archived in the system as a record. Business processes rely on these documents which contains personal and sensitive information. Adequate controls are required to protect the submitted documents in storage. Digitally signing a document can ensure its integrity (the document has not been altered), authenticity (the source of the document) and non-repudiation (the signer of the document cannot deny the signature) [4]. - Control 5: All users who have worked on a document shall sign the document using his/her digital signature certificate. For example, if an officer U worked on two documents D1 and D2, he/she shall digitally sign the documents as DSU(D1) and DSU(D2). The notation DSU(D) represents the digital signature of user U on document D [5]. Table 1 shows an example where a user of the service provider has uploaded the document and a user of the government department has approved the same.

C. Activity Log The activities carried out by the end users of the e-governance application must be recorded in an activity log. This is to ensure traceability and accountability (a user cannot disown an action at a later date). Examples of such activities include uploading a document, approvals in a workflow.

Raghu Ramakrishnan et al. / A Framework for Government Control over Sensitive Information in Outsourced e-Governance Projects

Control 6: All critical actions carried out by a user shall be signed using his/her digital signature certificate. The activities shall be recorded in the activity log. For example, if an officer has approved a service request, he/she shall digitally sign the action as DSU(A). The notation DSU(A) represents the digital signature of user U on metadata A. A may include the action name, service request number etc. Control 7: Use a digital signature based authentication system for accessing the application to perform critical roles. The authentication shall be recorded in the activity log. For example, during authentication, the system can send a challenge C which can be digitally signed as DSU(C) and returned back to the server for verification. The notation DSU(C) represents the digital signature of user C on challenge C.

Table 2 shows an example where a user of the service provider has carried out three activities.

D. Securing the Logs The database audit log and activity log have to be stored in a secure manner. The same must be periodically moved to a tamper proof archival device which is under the control of the government department. A tamper proof archival device can be a separate server which is controlled by the government department. - Control 7: Use a scheduled script to move new entries in the database audit log and activity log to a tamper proof archival device. E. Audit Tool A utility must be available for use by the government department to verify the effectiveness of their control. This utility can provide a consolidated activity report for a specific service request Control 8: Develop an activity report showing the changes in data, integrity of documents and activity carried by various users on a service request.

4. Conclusions Public Private Partnership model has not only helped Government departments leverage the best practices and learnings from the Service Providers and reduce its investment in core IT infrastructure, it has also made effective use of their technical and non-technical skills to service the internal and external customers. However, retaining control over sensitive information is an important challenge being faced by the government departments while executing large e-governance projects with involvement of a service provider. The implementation of proposed technical controls in such projects can improve the quality of control exercised by the respective government departments without either getting deeply involved in the day to day IT operations or controlling the freedom required by the service provider in architecting an efficient system. With increasing adoption of such PPP models, the controls described in this paper can be set as standard guidelines to ensure smoother operations.

Towards E-governance in the Cloud

Acknowledgment The authors wish to acknowledge the help of their colleagues Vikash Kumar, Vikash Vardhan, Kirti Kumar, Sandeep Goel and Sanchita Jain for their effort in technical prototyping of the suggested controls. References 1. (2005) National e-Governance Plan [Online]. Availablehttp://india.gov.in/govt/national_egov_plan.php 2. Guidelines for Strategic Control in Outsourced Projects, Department of Information Technology, Government of India, 2010 [Online].Available: http://www.mit.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/Guidelines_Strategic_Control_Outsorced_Proje cts_251110.pdf 3. DB2 Security, Part 8: Twelve DB2 security best practices. [Online]. Available: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-0607wasserman/index.html#bp7 4. T. J. Wasserman (2006) A primer on electronic document security, pp. 6-8. [Online]. Available: http://www.adobe.com/security/pdfs/acrobat_livecycle_security_wp.pdf 5. Guidelines for Usage of Digital Signature, Department of Information Technology, Government of India, 2010 [Online]. Available: http://egovstandards.gov.in/guidelines/Guidelines%20for%20Digitalsignature/Guidelines_for_Usage_of_Digital_Signatures_in_e-Governance__v1.0_revised_sent_by_DIT.pdf/view, pp.16-17

Enterprise Architecture Framework and Cloud Models for Rapid Replication

Tanmay Narang 1 * and Rajesh Narang 2 ABSTRACT Enterprise architecture is a strategic planning process for translating the vision of top management by building an IT system with the processes of Software Engineering. Vision of delivering e-governance services to citizens Closer to their home is taken up as the basis to plan strategy so architectural principles have been defined around it for adoption at Enterprise level. Some of the states have excellent applications for delivering services, so strategy is defined for seeker states to buy, borrow or acquire them from giver states before going on for new application development. New applications should not be used in traditional architectural way. So new Reference Architecture models based on Cloud Computing are defined for rapid replication in other states. Number of replicable models along with their data architecture and security concerns are assessed by applying a scenario based evaluation approach for replication model along with corresponding Reference Solution Architecture is presented. Solution Architecture is used as an implementation approach to solve the problem associated with each replication model. Each solution architecture is evaluated on several parameters such as data security, maintenance cost and hosting location and their adoption suitability is defined for different states. Keywords: Enterprise Architecture, Cloud, Replication Model, Strategic Architecture, Business Architecture 1. Introduction Enterprise Architecture framework is a common methodology and management practice designed to help government ministries and organizations to execute their core mission effectively. Framework is a definition of principles, strategy, inclusion of innovative replication models and thus a strategic guideline designed by an Enterprise Architecture applicable for all e-governance applications for all ministries to promote sharing of information, common services and resources among them to reduce cost, time and improve citizen services. At Enterprise Architecture level- architecture principles, strategy, functional architecture and application architecture are described for a set of organizations. Its deliverables are abstract in nature. Whereas Solution architecture is defined for a specific project to solve one problem at a time. So it is an implementation approach which translates business architecture based on the guidelines provided in Enterprise Architecture. Cloud Computing consists of models which allow rapid replication of existing applications, so it is shown here how these models can be implemented by applying methodologies and tools of Software Engineering and Project Management disciplines. The data architecture of three Replication Models including their data security and privacy levels as well as solution architecture for both traditional and Cloud environment are covered. State specific applications are replicable in nature. So, opportunity exists to develop them centrally in core, configurable and customizable mode. The common functionality of the application can be developed on the basis of users requirements given at the centre. Alternatively, there can be other applications running successfully in some states which also qualify for inclusion in the National
1

Thapar University, Punjab, India * Corresponding Author: (Email: tanmay.narang92@gmail.com, Telephone: +91-9871775413) 2 National e Governance Division, New Delhi, India

Towards E-governance in the Cloud

Application Store for replication provided they satisfy certain benchmarks. The application can be hosted on the national portal so that all the stakeholders of different states can take the demonstration of functionality encapsulated in the application. They can adopt the application after due configuration and customization of it. Configuration means change in layout, localization of user interface, theme, etc. whereas customization means change in business process implemented by changing the programs code. 2. Objectives The framework is an abstract model of the key characteristics of the architecture. It is built to give understanding of architecture design process and communicate the understanding to top management, Business Architect, Technical Architect, Project Manager of Software Engineers and Trainers or Capacity Building team. It is also designed to facilitate communication between all those who are involved in building it. The key objectives behind defining the enterprise architecture framework are as follows: - Establish and follow an organizational policy for architecture planning and performing the processes defined in it - Provide adequate resources for performing architectural processes, developing work artefacts and delivering the services of architectural framework to all involved in it - Monitor and control architecture design of specific projects against the processes defined in framework and suggest appropriate corrective action - Review the activities, status and outcomes of a project architecture design with high level management and resolve conflicts - Study Rapid Replication Model, adapt and adopt them to bring agility and acceleration in delivering services 3. Architecture Framework Currently three types of enterprise architecture frameworks are used: 1) Zachman Architecture Framework Zachman (1987), it focuses on Artefacts or products, 2) (TOGAF, 2011) focuses on Processes and 3) (Federal Enterprise Architecture, 2012) of USA is based on 4 reference models: Business Architecture, Data Architecture, Application Architecture and Technology Architecture. But here a new enterprise architecture framework for building e-Governance applications which includes best elements of all the above mentioned frameworks, viz., processes, products and performance assessment model is described. - Under this framework, it is suggested that conceptualization of each IT project be done by first considering the business requirements in terms of services which are expected from new system. It is called defining business architecture. The services define high level functionality which is further broken down into modules. This is called Functional Architecture. The business analyst defines both business and functional architecture and hands them over to Solution Architect for building Technical and Software Architecture. - Solution Architect refines them and evaluates software methodologies (RUP, Agile model, etc.), tools, applies the processes and practices of Software Engineering (Sommervile 2009) - Use Case Models, Replication Models and defines Technical and Solution Architecture so that the goals and objectives defined in business architecture can be met. The technical architecture is broken down into Application Architecture, Data Architecture and Technology Architecture. Application Architecture is considered at Presentation, Business and Data Access layer. - Data Architecture is defined through schema which in turn defines the security of data. Different data architecture models have been considered to demonstrate how security and ease of data management varies for them. - Technology Architecture defines technology for all application layers. It is recommended that Organizations or governments develop form utilities, message routing engines, common services such as eAuthentication, ePayment, SMS etc. centrally and allow different units of organization

Tanmay Narang et at. / Enterprise Architecture Framework and Cloud Models for Rapid Replication

or ministries to use them, build component based architecture and provide solution of an IT project. Delivering the projects in time, ensuring good quality and preparing the people to use new system require inclusion of other disciplines - Program Management (and Project Planning), Auditing and Change Management respectively supporting Software Engineering. So in this framework, four supporting disciplines along with software engineering discipline are entailed. Lastly, a model is also included which assesses whether all the goals and objectives as laid down in the business architecture have met so an impact assessment model is also included.

4. Vision and Goals For each project, the first step is to define its vision and strategy. Vision is a succinct and strategic statement describing the targeted end state for the line ministry or any organization in a given time framework. The vision provides strategic direction and is used to guide resource decisions, reduce costs and improve mission performance. The major components of the architecture framework are shown in Figure 1. 3 5. Strategy Top management defines the vision and goals. It also gives broad guidelines and policies which can be used as architectural principles for amendments and adoption of innovative methods in existing business processes to make the activities of organizations or government more vibrant, effective and efficient. The processes, activity of each process along with deliverables for Strategic Architecture are shown in Table 1.

Figure1: Enterprise Architecture Framework Table 1: Processes for Building Strategic Architecture

Towards E-governance in the Cloud

The term enterprise includes people, business processes or operations, technology and applies to all types of organizations. 6. Architecture Principles The development and design of applications and application should follow the below mentioned architecture principles: Rapid Replication: Architecture of application should be Software as a Service (SaaS) Compliant so that applications developed in one state can be reused in other states. - Qualifying Criteria: Important criteria for an application to qualify for replication are: application is developed on principles of Core, Configurable and Customizable architecture, 2) IPR is with govt. dejure or defacto, 3) technology is reasonably priced and upgradable, 4) delivers significant and sustainable volume of transaction successfully, 5) secure and scaleable and 6) artefacts such as SRS, FRS and design documents are available. - Independent Departmental Databases: Each department should have its own independent database to maintain its autonomy over its information. - Strategic Control: Each department must have complete control over its backend business processes, data, security and forms even if the application development is outsourced. 7. Business Architecture There are several stakeholders who have expectations from the application so each ones interest must be addressed, defined in terms of services, services level, i.e., the time within which each service must be delivered in the business architecture (refer Figure 2) for the success of the application. There are at least three stakeholders: Citizens, Tactical staffs and top management for each government IT project. The generic services which they expect from the projects are shown below

In a commercial organization the business stakeholders goal may be to increase profit, productivity and efficiency in day to day operations from new systems. So in all types of organizations, first of all, the existing business processes should be studied, understood and subsequently improved. This is called as Business Process Reengineering and it is done while defining Business Architecture. Here processes, their 10

Tanmay Narang et at. / Enterprise Architecture Framework and Cloud Models for Rapid Replication

activities, deliverables, conditions, roles (persons), communication between them and exceptions are studied. 8. Business Process Reengineering An IT project is as efficient as its processes are so the first task of business architecture is to improve the existing processes because the existing processes may have duplicate and redundant activities. If the existing processes dont have duplicate activities, even then they may require improvements since the new service levels may require the service which is provided now in say 7 days, has to be delivered in 4 days. The compliance to stringent service level agreements will force the business analyst to make the processes lean and efficient. The act of defining new business processes is called as Business Process Reengineering (BPR). Before new business processes are put into use, appropriate approvals will be required from appropriate authorities to change the existing business processes. After obtaining the approvals, States on the basis of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) issue Government Orders / Notifications as it may be required to give effect to electronic delivery of services based on improved business processes. 9. Functional Architecture (FA) It describes the functionality of a specific problem domain at very high level. The Functions are further broken down into modules. The functional architecture shows the interaction between modules, external systems and commercial Off the Shelf Product (COTS) through interfaces. The functions which accept input are shown on left hand side, Processing Functions which work on inputs and produce outputs, are placed in the middle and Output Functions which produce results are placed on right hand side (refer Figure 3).

Figure2: Business Architectural Framework Design structure of Functional Architecture (FA) (Sjaak and Stella, 2010) must adhere to principles of Modularity, Variability and Interoperability. - Modularity: Functions are designed in modules by decomposing software in several components. - Functional variability is interaction of modules of the software product with different internal and external functional modules, for example, an e-Governance application developed to issue say Birth Certificate need to interact with e-payment module developed by bank to realize a fee before delivering birth certificate. - Technical variability the technical features differ on different platforms so as far as possible FA should be independent of them. - Interoperability defines the interfaces that need to be provided between the software product's or application features and external products. Interfaces must be defined keeping in mind the organizational and international standards (refer Table 3) for achieving optimal flexibility. 11

Towards E-governance in the Cloud

Thus Functional Architecture (FA) is defined as an architectural model which represents at a high level the software product's major functions from a usage perspective, and specifies the interactions of functions, internally between each other and externally with other products.

Figure 3: Functional Architectural Framework 10. Technical (Software) Architecture Technical Architecture is the discipline of generating a creative & communicable technical design that aligns with business solution and stakeholder expectation. Thus it is built on the basis of Functional Architecture which depends upon business requirements. It breaks down into three segments- Application Architecture, Data Architecture and Technology Architecture (refer Figure 4). While defining the application architecture, the architects have to take into account the location of application deployment, security and privacy requirements of data, technology and number of instances, performance, integration and interoperability requirements.

Figure 4: Technical Architectural Framework

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Tanmay Narang et at. / Enterprise Architecture Framework and Cloud Models for Rapid Replication

Now when he tries to address other requirements such as location, number of instances and data security and privacy requirements, 3 application architectures, 3 data architectures one for each application architecture and one technological architecture on the basis of cloud technology emerge for state specific applications mentioned in Figure 5. 11. Application Architecture It is defined as the interaction between Presentation layer, business layer, data layer and Integration layer (refer figure 4 and Figure 6). Presentation Layer: It is defined in terms of User Interface, local language used, look and feel of the user interface, and static information rendered at it. The User Interface is rendered using ASP or JSP at the Internet browser of the citizens desktop. Business layer: It is an interface defined as services, service level agreements, process workflow of business processes and business components. For rendering its business services, it needs support for transaction management and thread management so that concurrent several requests can be met. The business layer abstracts the data persistence and sends the information to data layer through interface Data access layer: It is defined in terms of data access services, data management and data store. The business layer sends the data it has processed over ODBC/JDBC as it has capabilities to conceal complexity of Persistency of large data applications. Data resources such as databases or files are used to persist information.

Figure 5: Application and data architecture Model 12. Rapid Replication Models Suppose it is decided to use a single Human Resource (HR) application in all the states then the data architecture (Frederick , Gianpaolo and Roger, 2006) can take the following four shapes (refer Figure 5) a) Assuming there is a single schema, single application (HR application), one instance of application, host in one data centre for all states so a single database for all states. In this case, security is low and data management very difficult. b) Assuming there are separate schemas, separate instance of single application for each state hosted in their own data centre. In this case, security is high and data management is low in complexity. c) It is considered there are multiple schemas of single application (HR application), separate instance of application, separate database for each state hosted in one data centre. In this case, security is of medium level and data management is medium in complexity. But overall cost can 13

Towards E-governance in the Cloud

be brought down since the hardware resources at the time of deployment can be consolidated, virtualized and their usage can be optimized. d) It is considered there are separate schemas and different applications (different HR applications) hosted in different data centres. In this case, security is high and data management is low in complexity. Here maintenance cost is high. This is the current mode of implementation which is followed; the ways to bring down maintenance cost are explained above. Now data architecture corresponding to first three scenarios is described. The solution architecture for second and third scenarios is defined subsequently. First scenario is not taken since security is low in that and fourth is the conventional way of building the applications where maintenance cost is high. 13. Data Architecture Scenario 1: Single Application, Single Database hosted on one Data Centre (DC) for all States The Business Requirement over here is to develop a Centralized application with single scheme for all the states of India. Its application architecture implies that all the states have common data format, same business rules and same set of process and approval work flow. In such a situation all the states will use the same application, same database and single schema. When user logins, his state name is taken, accordingly the local language, configuration, customization and state specific master databases are loaded. It will require a very complex design since volume of transactions and concurrent users will be very high, data table will be common so it will be fully exposed to security and privacy risks and it also runs the risk of single point of failure of database for all states. Security: The other option to build data architecture is to have one physical separate set of tables for each state but kept in one database with a single and common schema (refer Figure 6). This kind of data architecture is suitable if size of transactions and concurrent users put together for all states are manageable. So this data model is suitable for smaller states where business rules are same so a single schema can be created for them. Data security, management and administration are all low. Note: This architecture is suitable for an application of central line ministry such as passport application of ministry of external affairs. Scenario 2: Single Application, Multiple Databases hosted in DC of each State Storing state data in separate databases is the simplest approach to data isolation. This is proposed in figure 8 below. In this case application code will only be shared with other states but it will be hosted on different servers of each Data Centre (DC). Security: Each state data is available in the database and storage device of that state. This makes the data highly secure, private and isolated from other states. As all the databases are separate from each other, so impact of failure is localized to only one state database and the recovery is faster. But the cost of hardware and system software maintenance is very high (refer Figure 7).

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Tanmay Narang et at. / Enterprise Architecture Framework and Cloud Models for Rapid Replication

Scenario 3: Separate instance of single application, separate database for each state hosted in one data centre (Cloud Model) In this case since instances of the application are to be created and hosted in one data centre, the advantages of virtualization can be reaped. Take the case of HR application, say developed by Delhi, and say this application is selected by Uttar Pradesh (UP), Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Andhra Pradesh (AP) and it is decided that instances of these applications will be hosted in data centre situated in Delhi. Assuming each state has its own Portal, in such a scenario how the solution can be built is explained here. - The Forms of each state, say UP, can be kept on the Portal of respective state in its own data centre and thus Presentation layer can be built in the data centre of that state itself.. - The filled up forms are handed over to middleware or message routing engine which routes them to state specific instance of the application on cloud, say in Delhi where business logic and database are hosted. - In a cloud mode, the physical compute power, CPUs are sliced down into cores and a virtualized compute power is assigned to each states application (refer Figure 8). The advantages of cloud computing are: each state can use on demand more compute power elastically, hardware resources can be optimized and better control on application can be exercised. The advantage of connecting and integrating Presentation layer of one data centre say UP with its application instance hosted on the cloud, say in Delhi through middleware is that if that state, UP wants to move the business logic and database from Delhi to say Andhra Pradesh, it becomes easy to move from one Cloud situated in Delhi to another Cloud situated in Hyderabad. So it is recommended to use middleware. Security: Security is moderate since data is stored at one place, but data of each state is in different database insulated from data of other states. Management and administration is also at individual state level. 14. Technology Architecture It is recommended that centrally technologies for front end, middleware and database should be developed. This is precisely done under e-governance programme and following components, services and modules are developed. They are all combined, converged to design component based solution architecture.

Figure 8: Cloud architecture for hosting applications on multi tenant mode For illustration, the solution architecture corresponding to scenario 2 and 3 are described here. 15

Towards E-governance in the Cloud

15. Solution Architecture It is proposed that a centralised application should be developed wherein the request will be initiated at the operator level or via an internet browser. The request will be generated using the e-Forms that contain the application specific fields and these forms will be hosted on the state portal in the Data Centre (DC). The data in the filled up form will be transformed into a standardised SOAP envelope by the messaging engine, message routing engine client end connector and will be delivered to the message routing engine server end connector via the message routing engine which is also hosted at the DC. Presence of middleware, message routing engine increases security of databases. The components talk to each other through interfaces, which means, components are tied loosely. Such architecture is called layered or tiered architecture.The component based solution architecture corresponding to scenario 2 is presented below

Figure 9: Component based architecture for state specific application with common services integrated The component based solution architecture for scenario 3 is already shown in Figure 8. Post Implementation Performance Assessment Framework When new system is put into service then after sometime a third party agency needs to be engaged to assess its Outcomes and not on its outputs. Thus a Performance Assessment Model is described to measure the performance of newly delivered system. The prime business objectives of building Enterprise Architecture are to allow citizens to avail government services closer to their home so that travel cost can come down, bring improvement in governance and increase citizens satisfaction level when they interact with government. So the applications need to be assessed for impact on 3 parameters: Assessing Performance on Cost, Assessing Performance on Governance and Assessing Performance on User Experience 16. Conclusion This framework is created to suit the needs of any organization which is keen to develop an enterprise architecture framework to promote reusability, agility and flexibility in its IT systems. Framework 16

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contains business architecture, functional (software) architecture built on the basis of business requirements. Technical (Software) architecture encompasses application, data and technology architecture. Framework also contains management disciplines such as Change Management, Strategic Control, Program (Project) Management. The overall aim in building and delivering application is to bring efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and accountability. But focus in current framework is on Outputs and not on Outcomes. To measure the impact of such applications on overall functioning of organization post implementation is the key element of this framework so towards achieving this goal, an application performance assessment model is included. Along with the Architecture Framework, the criteria for an application to enter into Application Store, Replication Models and Reference Architecture for traditional and cloud environments are articulated.

References
1. Ian Somerville (2009), Software Engineering 9th Edition, Published by Addison Wesley. 2. TOGAF (2011), Module 3 An Introduction to Architecture Development Method, http://www.togaf.org/togafSlides91/TOGAF-V91-M3-Intro-ADM.pdf 3. Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (2012), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki 4. Zachman, J.A(1987).: A framework for information systems architecture. IBM Syst. J. 26(3) 276292 5. R. Kazman, M. Klein, L. Bass, The Essential Components of Software Architecture Design and Analysis, Journal of Systems and Software, 79, 2006, 12071216. 6. Taylor, R.N., et al.(1996) A Component- and Message-Based Architectural Style for GUI Software. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. 22(6), p.390-406, 7. Gary Chen (2010), V i r t ual i zing T ier 1 Ap p l ic a ti o ns: A C r i t ical S tep on the Journey Toward the Private Cloud, IDC, Analyse the future 8. Frederick Chong, Gianpaolo Carraro, and Roger Wolter(2006) , Multi-Tenant Data Architecture, Microsoft Corporation, 9. Sjaak Brinkkemper and Stella Pachidi (2010), Functional Architecture Modeling for the Software Product Industry 4th European Conference, ECSA 2010, Copenhagen, Denmark, Proceeding pp198213.

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Beowulf Cluster: Cost Effective Solution for E-Governance

AmarJeet Singh 1 *, Rajesh Chauhan1, and Balvir Singh Thakur1 ABSTRACT Clusters may become efficient tools for government where availability of funds is limited but still high performance and availability of resources is needed. Beowulf cluster which are built primarily out of commodity hardware components, interconnected by a private high-speed network, provide cost effective solution. Rest of the paper presents the usefulness of Beowulf type cluster in e-governance, its architecture, administrative tools and various areas where such clusters can be helpful. Keywords: Cluster, e-Governance, Beowulf Cluster, Open Source 1 Introduction Developing countries facing fund crunches and cannot invest heavily on technology like Super Computers, Main Frame etc. instead low cost and high performance computing might be their preference for computing intensive tasks. Clusters such as Beowulf provide the way out where obsolete machines can also be used without compromising on the performance. For small sub-regions with low budgets, it is not possible to deploy single high end servers, which will be expensive and have the added disadvantage of being single point of failures. In such areas, clusters offer the best alternatives. Many e-Government services and databases can be hosted on low cost clusters such as Beowulf which provide good parallelism and adequate load balancing. These low cost clusters even provide the computing facility to community under Community Computing Center (CTC). Community computing is a resource-sharing model in which the users are provided with free or low-cost computer and Internet access. Promoted as a way to help to bridge the digital divide, community computing enables disadvantaged people to have reliable computer access and learn computer skills. The newly-learned skills, in turn, afford people more opportunities to improve their lives. Such type of low cost clusters under community computing is useful in education sector where there is already dearth of funds. Statistics says that large amount of electronics which includes desktop computers are either write-off or become e-waste that could be reused in making low cost clusters. Cost of setting up of clusters with obsolete hardware can be very small and sometime such hardware is available through donation. Clusters play a major part in the Government initiative to extend services to the common man, using Information technology (Annual Report 2010-2011). This is because clusters can provide load balancing as in web farms that host Government web portals and also offer a host of other services using the concept of server farms (W. Jeberson et al, 2007). As, multiprocessor machines become cheaper and so do the networking switches and cables; setting up web server farms and powerful parallel processing machines, will not remain a pipe-dream, but a day to day reality. 2 Cluster Overview Cluster is a term used for independent computers combined through networking and generally run on open softwares (Alexis OConnor et. Al, 2004). Clusters use two or more computers that work in unison to achieve common goal. Clusters are typically used for High Availability (HA) for greater reliability or High Performance Computing (HPC) to provide greater computational power than a single computer can provide (W. Jeberson et al, 2007). Clusters work mostly on master-slave where master has the responsibility to accept tasks and breaks them into subtasks to run on slaves. All slaves return their work back to master and there the result is clubbed together and returned back to the user. There may be any number of slaves. Master may host multiple users and each user in turn may submit individual jobs to
1

Himachal Pradesh University, India

* Corresponding Author: (Email: aj_singh_69@yahoo.co.uk, balvir.thakur@gmail.com)

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AmarJeet Singh et al. / Beowulf Cluster: Cost Effective Solution for E-Governance

master. Different types of clusters (W. Jeberson et al, 2007) are used for different works such as load balancing, high performance, high availability etc. one of well known implementation is Beowulf clusters which are low in cost but give high performance. Such clusters are based on distributed memory architecture where every processor has its own local memory and independent of the others. Other types of clusters are based on shared memory architecture. Developing countries may rely on Beowulf for their low cost and high performance. Beowulf is typical implementation where obsolete hardware can also be reused and made available for high performance computing. For best performance homogeneous computing hardware should be used to avoid latency in computation. Now a days it become practical to built parallel computational system from off-the-shelf components rather than buying CPU time on very expensive Supercomputers. As the technology grew, better hardware is available with decreased prices. In fact, the price per performance ratio of a one popular clusters implementation i.e. Beowulf type machine is between three to ten times better than that for traditional supercomputers. Beowulf architecture scales well and it is easy to construct. Most of the software are open-source and free (Muhammet NAL & Selma YNC, 2003). Following Figure (Fig1) shows nave architecture for Beowulf

Fig-1 (Nave Architecture for Beowulf) 3 Common Architectural Approaches Since Beowulf type clusters are de-facto for low cost computing. Reasons of choosing Beowulf Clusters from different types of supercomputers along with the design information is discussed (Muhammet NAL & Selma YNC, 2003). Lot of literature is available on Beowulf from designing to implementation. (Jenwei Hsieh, 2000) discussed the cost effective design choices for Beowulf clusters. (Aad J. van der steen, 2007) evaluated clusters in term of quality and management for their viability for use. (Rafael Bohrer et. al, 2003) conclusively discussed some distributed file system for beowulf. In this study xFS, PVFS and NFSP are compared in term of performance, fault tolerance and adequacy. There are many implementations available for Beowulf. Design choices for Beowulf can be categorized based on the 1) Network and 2) System Architecture. Single external node and multimode are the two choices. Former presents one entry point to the cluster using one monitor, one keyboard and one external IP. Users are usually encouraged to login only to the main node, and spawn remote jobs with only ssh. In Multimode environment, all nodes are equivalent from a network standpoint. They all have external IP addresses, and usually all have keyboards and monitors. For architecture point of view, 1) Local Synchronized disk, 2) Local Non-synchronized disk and 3) NFS root, are the three choices. In first configuration, all nodes have local disks. In addition, these disks are kept in sync by rsync that updates everything except /var, /tmp, and /etc/sysconfig. In this configuration, extra space and /home can be optionally NFS mounted across all clusters. In Local Nonsynchronized disk, all nodes have local disk, but they are not kept in sync. This is most useful for diskindependent parallel setups that merely do number crunching, and no disk-based syncronization. and NFS 19

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root architecture option is actually a reasonable choice for programs that need some disk syncronization, but dont need to disk-bound. 4 Code parallelism & Performance Criteria Not all the code is parallelizable. Code to generate Fibonacci series where subsequent value is dependent on previous value can not be parallelize. It is important to realize the limits upto which the scalability is possible. Amdahls law (wikipedia, 2012; W. Jeberson et al, 2007) used to find the maximum expected improvement to an overall system when only part of the system is improved. Speedup = 1/[S + {(1-S)/N}] i

Where N is number of processors and S is the serial fraction of code. It is assumed that 100% of the code cannot be parallelized and that some serial fraction of code will remain. Parallelizable code is derived by 1- S, where 1 is assumed to be 100% of the code. Efficiency may scale down if we keep adding the processors. (W. Jeberson et al, 2007) provides another equation that gives estimate of the relationship between time taken to run the code and the number of nodes, in the cluster. T(t) = S(t) + [P(t) / N] ii

Where t is time taken to run the code; ST is time taken to process the serial part of code; PT is time taken to process the parallel part of code and N is the number of nodes. 5 Comprehensive set of Tools for Beowulf Practical feasibility of Clusters in real scenario like in e-Governance depends on the support and availability of softwares to manage the clusters as it grows in size and scale. There are number of softwares available and are continuously growing in open community to manage different aspects of clusters. Following is the discussion of some tools available for clusters. KCAP consists of a set of complex tools and script that can converts complex system configuration into 3D representation. This representation allows the users to effectively navigate and visualize the cluster system. KCAP also comes with Java based real-time performance monitoring subsystem that continuously monitors system performance parameters and presents the information in 3D form using VRML and Java EAI technology. Scyld This refers to creating a cluster to do any type of task that involves a great deal of computing power. Scyld is one of them especially designed for Beowulf. This solution presents the cluster as a Single System Image with the help of enhanced kernel, tools and libraries. Scyld helps in managing the processes from master node. Slave processes are visible in master node, giving the impression of the cluster as single system. SCE, or the Scalable Cluster Environment, is a set of tools that allow you to build and use a Beowulf cluster. SCE (Scalable Computing Environment), consist of a set of cluster builder tool, complex system management tool (SCMS), scalable real-time monitoring, Web base monitoring software (KCAP), parallel Unix command, and batch scheduler. Linux Virtual Server Project is a project to cluster many real servers together into a highly available, high-performance virtual server. The LVS load balancer handles connections from clients and passes them on the the real servers and can virtualize almost any TCP or UDP service, like HTTP, HTTPS, NNTP, FTP, DNS, ssh, POP3, IMAP4, SMTP, etc. It is fully transparent to the client accessing the virtual service. FAI (Fully Automatic Installation) helps users to automate the installation process when slave nodes are the exact duplicate of hundred of other counterparts. FAI is helpful in larger implementation of clusters where administrator have to handle large number of slaves. This tool provides a non-interactive way to install the Debian GNU/Linux distribution. 20

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ClusterIt this tool provide easy maintenance of large groups of machines. It is meant to be utilized in managing server farms. It includes the features such as parallel rsh, parallel copy, parallel virtual xterminals (xterms), and job scheduling facilities for performing parallel compiling. Ganglia is a scalable distributed monitoring system for high-performance computing systems such as clusters and grids. It is based on a hierarchical design targeted at federations of clusters. A ganglion is currently in use on over 500 clusters around the world and has scaled to handle clusters with 2000 nodes. Stability, realtime monitoring and remote execution environment are some of its advantages. It is in use in universities, government labs, and complete cluster implementations all over the world. Syncopt is used to updating the slaves without manual intervention. This software is installed on a central server and propagated to all systems that need it. PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) is a portable message-passing programming system, designed to link separate host machines to form a ``virtual machine'' which is a single, manageable computing resource. The virtual machine can be composed of hosts of varying types, in physically remote locations. Cluster101 allows you to run software on many hosts and perform a simple task scheduling. It uses ssh. It is typically used for running scientific applications on University campuses. Automated Beowulf Cluster ABC GNU/Linux This Ubuntu GNU/Linux based distribution allows to automatically build Beowulf clusters either live or installing the software in the frontend. MPJ Express is a JAVA implementation of MPI standardized by the Java Grande forum. Theses MPIs are used to write parallel Java applications, which can execute on a variety of parallel platforms included multi-core processors. 6 Area of Applications for Government Sector Country can harness the power of clusters by using them in computational hungry complex application like weather forecasting, Disaster Management & Control System, Exploration of Minerals, Oil & Gas. Such high computing power can be made available through governments initiatives like National Knowledge Network etc. Increased computational resource needs of modern applications are frequently being met by clusters in a number of domains ares (Scyld, 2012; NIC, 2003): DomainAreas
Computationally IntensiveActivities

Uses
Optimization problems, stock trend analysis, financial analysis, complex pattern matching, medical research, genetics research, image rendering.

Scientific Research

Computing/ Engineering simulations, 3Dmodeling, finite element analysis, computational fluid dynamics, computational drug development, seismicdataanalysis,PCB/ASICrouting Data Data mining, complex data searches and results generation, manipulatinglargeamountsofdata,dataarchivalandsorting Webfarms,applicationserving,transactionserving,dataserving Gene expression data analysis, multiple sequence alignments, genetic

LargeScale Processing

Web/InternetUses BiomedicalSciences

Table-1 (Domain areas for Cluster) 21

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Above are the main areas where the cluster is helpful. Apart from this there are areas such as Education, Academics, Long Term Data Archival, Data Mining, where government might not invest heavily at preliminary stage, such solution provide a good start. 7 Conclusion Clusters with associated tools and components provide strong computing architecture to support the diverse needs of interdisciplinary areas of government. This helps developing countries to provide cost effective solution for community computing as well as various intra-government affairs. Beowulf type clusters not only useful in research area but also helpful in web and database areas where government can easily implement such solutions. They provide reliability & availability of resources and avoid single point failure.

References 1. NIC (2003), Informatics , Vol-12, No-2, , http://informatics.nic.in 2. W. Jeberson, V.V.Klinsega & Avinash Chandra Mishr (2007), Cluster Computing for Effective E-Governance, GMSARN International Conference on Sustainable Development: Challenges and Opportunities for GMS, 12-14 Dec. 2007, available at http://www.mpuhost04.ait.ac 3. Wikipedia (2012), Amdahl's law, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law 4. Annual Report 2010-2011, Princeton University, Office of Information Technology, available at http://www.princeton.edu/oit/about/oit-annual-report. 5. Alexis OConnor, Kian Win Ong, Ted Sander, Matt Ferlo (2004), Government Policies on Open Source , available at http:// www.cs.washington.edu. 6. UKRAINE (2009),Collaboration opportunities for EU ICT R&D organizations in UKRAINE , available at http://www.eeca-ict.eu 7. Muhammet NAL & Selma YNC (2003), Choosing The Right Hardware For The Beowulf Clusters Considering Price/Performance Ratio, Gazi University, Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering, available at http://www.emo.org.tr/ekler/88f9153ac4fd966_ek.pdf 8. Rafael Bohrer vila1, Philippe Olivier Alexandre Navaux, Yves Denneulin (2003), A Comparison on Current Distributed File Systems for Beowulf Clusters. Available at http://www.inf.ufrgs.br/~avila/download/Avila:CCD-WSGPPD03.pdf 9. Jenwei Hsieh (2000), Design Choices for a Cost-Effective, High-Performance Beowulf Cluster, Power Solutions, Issue 2. 10. Aad J. van der steen, (2007), An evaluation of some Beowulf clusters, www.hpcresearch.nl/euroben/reports/clusterbm.ps.gz 11. Jason Ng & Greg Rogers (2000), Clusters and Node Architecture, School of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Monash University. Available at http://www.buyya.com/csc433/ClusterNodeArch.pdf 12. Putchong Uthayopas, Sompong Techarphonchai, Tawee Iam-ngamsup (2001), Visualizing A Large Scale Beowulf Cluster Using Web And Vrml Technology, Parallel Research Group, CONSYL, Available at http://www.citeseerx.ist.psu.edu 13. 2012, Building Linux Beowulf Clusters: Types of Beowulf Clusters,http://fscked.org/writings/clusters/cluster-2.html. 14. Scyld (2012), Users Guide Scyld ClusterWare Release 5.8.0-580g0000, Published June 11, 2012, Copyright 1999 - 2012 Penguin Computing, Inc.

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Theme: Conceptual Frameworks in eGovernance Transforming Service Delivery with Information Exchange Enablers
Praful Gharpure 1 * ABSTRACT As per Census 2011, about one-third of India (377 million) lives in urban areas. India has got 400+ Urban Local Bodies (ULBs). These urban local bodies are statutorily responsible for the provision and maintenance of basic infrastructure and services in areas of their jurisdiction. With increasing urban population, on one side we see undersupply of housing that is affordable to a range of household incomes, particularly to lower and moderate income wage earners and on the other side we see shortfall in Service Delivery to support the spread of cities due to increased construction activities . Urban service delivery in Indian cities is fragmented due to multiple entities. IT initiatives in different departments are carried out independent of each other, which dilutes the impact of the initiatives. Even though IT is on the agenda of all departments, an integrated approach to its rollout and effective sharing of information and IT infrastructure is lacking. There is a need to look at present e-Governance initiatives from a service management perspective where information exchange among various departments is a vital element for service delivery and support to give assurance to the end customer, the citizen. In an Urban setup if IT initiatives complement one another we can see a transformation wave in Service Delivery; Urban housing sector is one potential case discussed in this article. Keywords: Housing , Real Estate , Municipal ,Governance 1. Introduction As per Census 2011, the urban areas in India account for 31 % of the population. About one-third of India (377 million) lives in urban areas, 50% of the urban population resides in metro cities. The number of such cities in India has increased from 35 in 2001 to 53 in 2011. Urbanisation is associated with increased incomes, improved health, higher literacy, expectation of improved quality of life and other benefits. At the same time it increases housing demand in urban areas which results in strain on the physical and social infrastructure. The situation results in undersupply of housing that is affordable to a range of household incomes, particularly to lower and moderate income wage earners. Trends of real estate prices particularly residential housing is of vital importance to the macro economy as well as to various stakeholders which include the lender, borrowers and aspirants of own house. Lack of a credible housing price data series has been a cause of concern for academicians, administrators and investors in India. Even with use of Information Technology (IT) in the past few years, there has been lack of publically available information on housing price movements in India. Given the shortcomings of the existing valuation system of the government and the undervaluation of properties due to a variety of reasons, the little data presently available cannot be used for meaningful analysis. While IT implementation is on the agenda of all service provider departments, priority is given to computerizing the revenue earning departments like Octroi, commercial tax, land records, transport etc. While these initiatives provide the intended outcome to the service provider departments, the information from the processes covering these can be leveraged to provide value added services benefiting citizen. If IT initiatives across various service provider departments in an Urban setup complement one another we can see a transformation wave in Service
1

Tata Consultancy Services, India *Corresponding Author: (Email: praful.gharpure@tcs.com,)

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Towards E-governance in the Cloud

Delivery; housing sector is one potential case discussed in this article. Housing in Urban Areas Current Scenario The real estate sector alone contributes to 5-6 per cent of the India's GDP. Along with housing, hospitality and commercial properties together constitute the Real Estate sector which plays an important role in the Indian economy. This sector happens to be the second largest employer after agriculture. As per reports published by Indian Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF) the size of the Indian real estate market is expected to touch US$ 180 billion by 2020. The technical group of Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation to assess the urban housing shortage in India has estimated that at the end of the 10th Five Year Plan (2007-08) the total housing shortage in the country stands at 24.71 million dwelling units. Over the decade, urban areas have experienced a rise in population and employment base that has outpaced its supply of housing. In urban areas there are residents owning multiple properties there by causing an imbalance in overall housing stock utilization. Housing is one of the primary needs for every human being; however the situation in Urban areas where on one side there is growing demand for houses; on the other side the vacancy rate is also growing with stocks getting added progressively. There is a growing imbalance in housing sector due to increasing vacancy rates and rising real estate prices both happening simultaneously. Causal analysis for these reveals few key parameters which are given in Figure I below.

Figure I Potential Causes for Increasing Prices and Vacancy rates in Housing Stake holder Departments in the Reality Sector In urban areas the civic authority i.e municipal corporation is the key stake holder in real estate sector as it governs the place of existence of the elements constituting this group of entities. Furthermore these urban local bodies facilitate the provision of services like road, water, power, telecom etc either directly or through another supplier department owned by government. In addition the governance is mandated by the office of Inspector General of Stamps & Registries along with Town planning department which keep inventory of all transaction and usage of constituents of real estate sector. Lets see the scale of operations of the Department of Registration and Stamps alone which has a presence in all the states . It is the second highest revenue earning department in most of the states. In a large state like Maharashtra the department has more than 500 offices managed by over 2,500 employees, according to the departments official website. The department is primarily responsible for registration of documents under the Registration Act, its mandate being the registration of deeds or instruments and their preservation. The registration process encompasses the sub-functions such as receipt generation, valuation, recovery of evaded stamp duty, refund of excess stamp duty, adjudication and issuing of notices. As per statistics posted on the website, in Maharashtra alone close to 2.2 million documents have been registered and of Rs 5,000 crore have been handled. Approximately 8 million people are direct beneficiaries of the services annually in the state. The above figures give an idea of the user which has direct linkage with the other service providers. Figure II below gives 1. The linkage of any User Information attributes with the various service provider departments.

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Praful Gharpure / Theme: Conceptual Frameworks in eGovernance Transforming Service Delivery with Information Exchange Enablers

2. It illustrates the interlinkages amongst the various departments providing the basic services to citizens (users) in urban areas. The users go through series of rework loops for the want of information and information updating subsequent to any transaction carried out.

Figure II : Information Channels All these service providers have a fee structure, however the agency which has a pivotal role to play i.e Urban Local Body which on its own has very limited means of finance. Civic bodies have property tax as a major source of revenue. Recently Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) and Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) introduced Capital Value Assessment Scheme for million properties in its jurisdiction. The scheme has invoked mixed response from citizens and their elected representatives at these corporations putting hold on the rollout of new structure. With the property prices skyrocketing in last 10 yrs the intent of these major municipal corporations of the country is loud and clear ; to leverage the situation and keep property tax revenue in upward trend since it is a major source of income for all urban local bodies. Though this is a fair expectation for municipal corporations the fact remains that there are potential services which can be derived from the Information which flows through the structure of the various service provider departments which exist within the jurisdiction of these corporations which plays pivotal role as shown in Figure II. Urban Governance with Service Delivery One of the key aspects of local government function is the delivery of services to its citizens with due focus on performance of the services provided. In the country currently several programs are underway for betterment of service; these are commonly referred as Government to Citizen (G2C), Government to Business (G2B), Government to Government (G2G) services. The goal of these programs is to equip the city administration to provide services to the end user with affordable cost and optimum time of service delivery processes. In a broad sense improvement of service delivery and robust maintenance / support mechanism to improve Governance is the intended outcome. Governance is the act of governing. It relates to decisions that define expectations, grant power, or verify performance. One of the key aspects of government function is the delivery of services to its citizens with due focus on performance of the services delivered. Governance has three important dimensions namely Political, Economic and Institutional. Under the context of current discussion institutional dimension is the key area constituting processes by which citizens and the state exercise their respective roles. The issue of governance in Urban areas is extremely important not only for the millions who live there but also for the economic development of the country as a whole. Effective and efficient service delivery mechanism is a key to this. Potential Transformation with Information Exchange In the discussion above we have seen the elements of real estate sector, the governing /stakeholder departments and the information linkages. Figure II above also brings about the drivers of costs of real estate. The information linkages described

25

Towards E-governance in the Cloud

above can provide meaningful indicators to Urban Local body to take some policy decisions to bring about equilibrium in overall service delivery and enhancement in end user experience.

Figure III : Existing Process and Cycle time The example of a property registration workflow highlights the transformation which such an information exchange brings in. In the example the end customers of process are the buyer and seller of a property. As things stand today the customer is required to work with multiple processes at different departments to get the records updated. This leads to a series of rework loops to gather information first and updating other records post transaction. Its ironical that all these departments have got their own process IT enabled partially, however the cycle time of transactions carried out has not improved significantly. The Figure III above outlines the existing process with information of cycle time for broad components there in. It also highlights the rework areas experienced by the end user. The case here is of IT implementations which are carried out at process level of a department. The dependent information from other departments for the same user has to be provided by user himself leading to multiple handoffs of the data and manual effort on part of user and the departmental staff. As a result the users go through series of rework loops for the want of information and information updating subsequent to any transaction carried. As evident from Figure III above, there is a significant amount of rework, idle time, delays, handoffs in the existing process thereby it takes 533 hours i.e. 23 business days. Further the trips to various offices have effects like working hours loss of customers from their work, trips generating traffic on road plus the agony one goes through. The above example stresses a need for information exchange amongst department with adequate tagging to end user identity. Since the individual departments have carried out IT implementation the deployment of framework can be channelized through the common portal. The development of citizen interface at common portal and deployment of interoperability solution across applications in various departments can lead to acceleration of the process steps through information exchange. 26

Praful Gharpure / Theme: Conceptual Frameworks in eGovernance Transforming Service Delivery with Information Exchange Enablers

Figure IV: Transformed Process with Information Exchange Figure IV above gives the view of the transformed processes. Once the service catalogue is defined and adopted by the provider departments the interdepartmental data exchange shall lead to reduction in overall transaction time. Even the mechanism of Incident reporting and resolution can be effectively achieved. Enabling Mechanism for Information Exchange There is a need to develop an information exchange mechanism amongst all service provider departments which can provide data to statistical information system related to revenue earning channels to government like real estate market in India to analyse the trends better. The current discussion looks at potential information sources which can bring in parameters which can help induce reforms to help improve city Governance by way of transformed service delivery. There is a need of an integrated approach for the delivery of Indias Urban Services backed by efficient service support mechanism involving a user interface. IT implementation in Urban India is happening in bits and pieces. IT has found place on the agenda of all the departments however what is lacking is an integrated approach to its rollout and effective sharing of IT infrastructure to economize the initiatives. Shared IT infrastructure and adoption of Process Framework is a potential solution. Service management in IT world has effectively leveraged the best practices across globe in effective service delivery and support. These are known as ITIL framework. ITIL is a set of best practices intended to facilitate the delivery of high quality information technology (IT) services. The acronym ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) is a Registered Trade Mark of the United Kingdom's Office of Government Commerce (OGC).The ITIL processes aim at achieving high financial quality and value in IT operations. These 27

Towards E-governance in the Cloud

procedures are supplier-independent and have been developed to provide guidance across the breadth of IT infrastructure, development, and operations. ITIL is the most widely accepted approach to IT service management (ITSM) today. In the context of Urban Service delivery the synergy in process framework outlined in ITIL can be effectively leveraged. The Urban Service Delivery is primarily concerned with the proactive and forward-looking services that the Government departments require from its ICT provider in order to deliver to Citizens. It needs to be focused on the need of citizen as the Customer of the ICT services. The Service Support is focused on the Users of the services and is primarily concerned with ensuring the access to the appropriate services to support the business functions. Figure V below gives the Process View of urban services.

Figure V Process Framework View of Urban Service Provision 2. Conclusion Information exchange amongst the initiatives using the customer centric approach like the one described above shall lead to rollout of solutions which shall have a wide user base. As we progress towards maturity of e-governance, there is a need for provision of IT enabled services in urban governance tuned to end user requirements. The challenge faced by the champions of IT initiatives in India is the limited scope of expansion of the Service Catalogue to cover a varied range of services. The underlying cause for this is the siloed style of IT implementations by service provider departments wherein individual processes are automated. The key link of interdepartmental information exchange is missing and is left to the end-user to bridge by manual means leading to rework at the customer end. There is an urgent need to work at the individual solution level at each department in order to build an interface layer and security solution and facilitate the information flow. The investment made in e-governance initiatives shall not provide the desired benefits unless these initiatives mature from current static state to enhanced stage i.e.by enabling end users to carry out transactions, users can get involved and use the service leading to wide-ranging benefits. References 1. Gharpure Praful (2007). Towards a better urban e-Governance ITIL way. eGov Journal. 2. Gharpure Praful (2008). Making Processes Lean. Express Computers . 3. Gharpure Praful (2010). Managing User Identity in e governance.13th National eGovernance Conference. 4. IT service Management Forum publications on ITIL framework 28

Enterprise Suite for Panchayats

Rama Hariharan 1 * and Deepak Chandra Misra1 ABSTRACT Panchayats, the rural local governments of India are units of Government that are closest to the rural population. In an effort to bring about development across the country, Central and State Governments have been providing funds to Panchayats for undertaking local area development. The large inflow of funds and the development responsibility entrusted to them has made it imperative to transform Panchayats into efficient and transparent organizations. Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Government of India launched the ePanchayat Mission Mode Project to achieve this end using ICT tools. As part of the activities of this project, an Enterprise Suite for Panchayats which attempts to address majority of the functional responsibilities of panchayats has been developed. The paper describes the methodology adopted to gather the nationwide requirements, the broad features of the Enterprise Suite and its design. The paper concludes by highlighting the challenges to be addressed to successfully implement the Suite across all Panchayats in the country. Keywords: Panchayats, Local Governments, Enterprise Suite 1. Introduction A. Background Panchayats, as rural local governments of India, are symbols of decentralization and democracy. There are approximately 250,000 Panchayats in the country. In spite of their formation and the potential they offer to strengthen grass root governance, there is a wide gap between the vision and reality. Panchayats in many States are not empowered to the extent it was envisaged in the Constitution. Government of India, therefore, formed Ministry of Panchayati Raj in 2004 with the mandate to strengthen these institutions of local governments. MoPR adopted a multi-pronged strategy to achieve its mandate. One major strategy was to exploit the power of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools and introduce comprehensive and holistic automation in Panchayats so that they become efficient and transparent and thus are able to establish themselves as credible and accountable institutions in the eyes of citizens as well as the higher tiers of governments. Accordingly, MoPR formulated the ePanchayat Mission Mode Project (MMP) as part of the National eGovernance Plan (NeGP) of Government of India. B. ePanchayat MMP The main aim of ePanchayat MMP was to ensure efficient, transparent, accountable and citizen centric governance (DARPG, 2009) in Panchayats.. Accordingly, the objectives of the MMP included automation of internal workflow, strengthening of service delivery at local level, enhancing transparency and using ICT to build capacities of officials and elected representatives. Before undertaking a project of such unprecedented proportions, MoPR took a decision to undertake a nation-wide study to assess: - The role of Panchayats in States - The needs and expectations of various Central and State Government departments vis--vis Panchayats - ICT interventions made by the State governments at Panchayat level
1

National Informatics Centre, India

* Corresponding Author: (Email: dcmisra@nic.in)

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Towards E-governance in the Cloud

ICT readiness of Panchayats Internal automation needs of Panchayats Service Delivery needs of citizens

A wide-base consultative process was followed wherein Central Line Ministries, State Line Departments and functionaries of District, Intermediate and Village Panchayats were consulted. Detailed citizen interaction was undertaken through gram sabha meetings and individual/focused group interactions. The study spanned 128 Panchayats in 45 Districts across 34 States and Union Territories. Based on the study, detailed Information and Service Need Assessment (ISNA) reports and Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) Reports were prepared (http://epanchayat.gov.in). While the ISNA report gave a comprehensive understanding of the information and service needs of various stakeholders vis-vis Panchayats, the BPR reports provide the As-IS and To-Be processes of 20 citizen services identified by the State Government. Taking inputs from the ISNA and BPR reports, Detailed Project Reports were prepared for each State to assess the resource requirement for introducing and implementing eGovernance in Panchayats in the State. C. Areas Identified for automation The study revealed many aspects of governance (Figure 1) in Panchayats which presented themselves as potential areas for automation. Out of them, eight areas of functioning of Panchayats were identified for development centrally in view of their high demand. The rest of the areas were left to States for automation. The eight areas identified for automation centrally included: - Resource Profiling - Planning - Accounting - Scheme/Works Implementation Reporting - Asset Management - Service Delivery & Grievance Redressal - Social Audit - Training and Skill Management

P R I B usiness F ramew ork

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Rama Hariharan et al. / Enterprise Suite for Panchayats

Figure 1 Panchayat Business Domain Framework It was decided to develop these applications as web-based applications. Since the applications were not be installed on the machines of individual Panchayats, it was necessary to retain the identity of the Panchayat which has entered the data in all the applications so that the data entered in one could be seamlessly used by another. In order to achieve this, the first step was to have a standard codes for Panchayats across the country. One important observation was that formation and delimitation of Panchayats at times also lead to their merger with urban local bodies and vice versa. Also, whenever there is any re-organization of land regions, the underlying local governments may also get affected which again leads to re-formation of local governments. In an automated environment, the impact of these changes also needs to get reflected in all the systems automatically. It was, therefore, required to maintain not only the latest list of Panchayats but also maintain all details related to history of formation/de-limitation of Panchayats so that changes in the directory are systematically propagated to all the automated systems. Thus, Local Government Directory became another important application to be developed along with other applications. Finally, it was obvious that every Panchayat should have a web site to establish an identity in Internet space and use it as a medium to share all information with the citizens. In view of the lack of technical manpower at village panchayat level and in view of the large number of Panchayats, it was desirable to build a system which can generate the web sites for Panchayats with minimum technical knowledge from Panchayats. Panchayat Portals was thus taken up as another application to be included as part of the Enterprise Suite for Panchayats. Based on the above analysis, it was decided to build an Enterprise Suite for Panchayats, to be called the Panchayat Enterprise Suite (PES) that provides a single integrated platform to carry out all major functions of Panchayats with seamless flow of information across all governance functions of Panchayats and also to expose interfaces for integration with external stakeholders. The list of applications which were taken up are given in Table 1. Once the functional areas were identified, the next logical step was to conduct detailed analysis of requirements in all these functional areas. Requirements gathering and analysis was a challenging exercise, particularly in the context of users who are remotely located as explained in the following paragraphs. 2. Requirements Gathering The nationwide study provided a broad contour of the enterprise functions of Panchayats. In order to fully automate, it was necessary to understand the detailed functional and non-functional requirements of each of the identified areas (D.C. Misra, 2012). Requirement gathering requires detailed discussions with end users to understand their domain and the expectations of the end users from the systems. However, eliciting the requirements from individual Panchayat users was not at all a feasible option as there are approximately 250,000 district, intermediate and village panchayats in the country. The problem was further compounded by the fact that while there were commonalities in the overall functioning of Panchayats across the country, there were variations in some functional requirements from State to State. One positive aspect was that within a State the functioning of Panchayats was fairly uniform as dictated by State Panchayati Raj Act. This was helpful as representatives could be drawn from each state to understand the functional requirements of the domain. Hence, it was decided to invite two officials from the State Panchayati Raj Department and CEOs from two District Panchayats of each State for understanding the requirements. Five regional workshops in north, south, east, west and north-east were held to cover the entire country. Representatives from a group of 6-7 states were invited to participate in the workshop.

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The time-tested technique of prototype preparation and using the same as the basis for discussion during face-to-face interaction was used. The prototype was drawn up based on inputs received from senior officials of the Ministry. It was then used as a demonstration and discussion tool to elicit the requirements from the participants. Extensive discussions were held in the workshops. The discussions revealed variations, not only in terms of possible values a field can take and requirements for new fields but also variations in terminologies and nomenclatures used by States. The varying requirements put forth by States needed to be either reconciled or generalized so that maximum requirements of all the States are captured. After each workshop, the prototype was modified to reflect the latest understanding. After the completion of the third workshop, new requirements were not large in number and hence it was decided to begin the preparation of SRS. After the end of the fifth regional workshop, the SRS preparation was completed. Besides the functional requirements, the ISNA reports as well as discussions in regional workshops revealed many non-functional requirements. These non-functional requirements emerged from the unique context in which Panchayats operate. These included the following: - Lack of availability of computers, particularly at Village Panchayat level - Poor or no Internet connectivity at Village Panchayat level - Poor electricity infrastructure - Use of multiple local languages even within a State - Poor literacy of citizens - Poor IT literacy, both of citizens as well as officials - Lack of sufficient manpower at village panchayat level. For example, one Panchayat Secretary, managing more than one Panchayat. - Lack of technical support at Gram Panchayat level - Challenges involved in providing repeated training to large number of officials who are remotely located - Many Programme MIS are being created by Central and State governments which Panchayats are required to use. Also, some States have gone ahead and developed some software applications for internal automation of Panchayats. These systems work in silos and do not talk to one another. Such proliferation of systems at Panchayat level creates various problems such as need to do duplicate data entry, understand systems designed with different UI and use multiple credentials to access different systems. All of these lead to reduced productivity at Panchayat level instead of enhancing it. - Some of the States have gone ahead and developed some software applications for Panchayats and they should also be integrated with the Panchayat Enterprise Suite and exchange data with it in a seamless flow. 3. Panchayat Enterprise Suite (PES) PES is the first of its kind in India in the sense that it attempts to treat a government entity (Panchayat) as an enterprise and attempts to address all its governance functions holistically through an integrated suite of applications. Table 1 lists all the applications that are currently built as part of the Panchayat Enterprise Suite and Figure 2 provides a layered view of the applications in PES.

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Rama Hariharan et al. / Enterprise Suite for Panchayats

Table 1 S.N Application Description Can be used by Rural Bodies 1 Local Government Directory Area Profiler Captures details of formation of local Yes governments and assigns unique code http://lgdirectory.gov.in Captures the geographic, demographic, Yes Socio-economic and natural resources profile of urban and rural local governments. Could be used for planning purposes. http://areaprofiler.gov.in Helps Planning units such as Yes panchayats, urban local bodies and line departments in preparing Perspective, Annual, Action Plan http://planningonline.gov.in Captures receipt & expenditure details Yes through voucher entries and automatically generates cash book, registers, Utilization Certificates etc. http://accountingonline.gov.in Facilitates monitoring physical & Yes financial progress of works taken up under Plan http://reportingonline.gov.in Maintains details of assets Yes created/maintained; helps avoid duplication and provide for O&M http://assetdirectory.gov.in A dynamic metadata-based service Yes delivery portal that captures the complete definition of a service and its grievance redressal policy and uses the same to dynamically enable electronic delivery of services and redressal of related grievances (Rama, 2011) http://serviceonline.gov.in Details of statutory meetings held at Yes ZP/BP/GP, requests for reports for social audit http://socialaudit.gov.in 33 Local Urban Line Local Departments Bodies Yes No

Yes

No

PlanPlus

Yes

Yes

PRIASoft

No

No

ActionSoft

Yes

Yes

6.

Asset Directory

Yes

Yes

7.

ServicePlus & Grievance Redressal

Yes

Yes

8.

Social Audit

No

No

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9.

Training & Skill Management Panchayat Portals GIS

Training portal to address training needs Yes of stakeholders including citizens, their feedback, training material etc. http://trainingonline.gov.in Web site for each Panchayat to share Yes information in public domain http://panchayatportals.gov.in

Yes

Yes

10.

Yes

No

11.

A spatial layer to view all data Represents the basic data of PES generated by all applications on a GIS modules on a spatial layer map

Figure2LayeredViewofPES A. Features and Broad Design PES is designed as a web-based, UNICODE enabled solution, using Open Source technologies in Java/Spring Framework and Postgres as the backend database. The functional and non-functional requirements thrown-up during requirements gathering and analysis phase were factored in the design of PES as explained below:

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Rama Hariharan et al. / Enterprise Suite for Panchayats

The

1. PES Context View external actors and

systems

which

interact

with

PES

is

depicted

in

Figure

3.

Figure 3 PES Context View 2. PESInternalView Figure 4 provides the internal view of PES in terms of interaction among its constituent applications.

Figure 4 Integration among PES applications

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3. SingleSignOn PES provides Single Sign On capability thereby enabling end users to use the same credentials to access multiple PES applications where they have privileges. However, the end users are remote and user management for different applications may be managed by different officials at State level. Thus, it is possible that the same Panchayat level user may be assigned multiple user credentials under different applications of PES. PES provides a facility to end users to map their multiple credentials to a single credential, thus retaining the benefit of Single-Sign-On. 4. Dual Modes of Access PES provides its end users, two modes of access to its constituent applications. As an Enterprise Suite, it can be accessed through a single portal. When accessed in this mode, PES gives the end user an integrated view of its applications. Depending on the users privileges, all forms are presented through a single interface thereby enhancing user experience. Alternatively, if the user desires to access only one application, he may do so using the application specific URL. In this mode, the user will view only that application whose URL he has accessed. 5. Multilingualcapability The suite is designed to be fully UNICODE compliant. Each State can choose its own language(s) in which the end users will work. One State may select more than one language for use by its users. PES gives a user-friendly interface which can be used by each State to enter the translated labels and messages in the desired languages and publish it for use by the end users of the State. 6. ConsistentUserInterfaceDesign Consistent user interface design is a best practice which should be adopted by any software. It is particularly important for Panchayat level users in view of their limited exposure to IT solutions and the challenge involved in providing training to them. In view of this, the entire PES suite adopts a uniform user interface. In addition, many of the mandatory requirements defined as per the Web Site guidelines (issued by Government of India) to enable visually challenged people to access and use the application are incorporated. Facilities for changing colour themes, increasing or decreasing font size etc. are available. Field level help texts are made available whenever the user clicks on a field to enter data. A toggle switch is made available which can be switched on or off as per user requirement. Form level textual as well as audio enabled help are also available. 7. UserManagement User management in PES is done centrally. This essentially means that all users, irrespective of the application which they are privileged to use, are maintained in a single LDAP server. Privileges are assigned through the assignment of roles and user groups. One user may be assigned roles in multiple applications. PES provides Single-Sign-On facility using CAS using which one user can access some or all applications as per his/her assignment. This reduces the load on the end user as he/she need not use multiple credentials to access the constituent applications of PES. Further, in order to address the issues related to lack of manpower and connectivity, particularly at Village Panchayat level, PES is designed to allow one user to manage data entry for multiple units of government. Thus, a Panchayat Secretary who has been assigned the responsibility to manage five Panchayats can be given one user credential using which he can manage data entry related to all the Panchayats assigned to him. In many cases, when a State decides to use an application, it requests user credentials for all the Panchayats in the State in one go. In order to meet this need, PES provides facility for bulk user creation. .

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Rama Hariharan et al. / Enterprise Suite for Panchayats

8. HelpFacility The major end user community of PES is comprised of Panchayat officials who are large in number, communicate only in local language, have limited capabilities vis--vis IT systems and are very remotely located. In order to successfully implement any application for use by these users, repetitive trainings are required so that they become comfortable with the usage of applications. But this in itself is a very challenging task. Recognizing this, PES is designed to provide continuous on-job training to end users through the use of help text. Normally, user manual is prepared separately and a link is provided to the user manual. While this is useful, very few end-users actually go through the user manual, the main reason being that they find it cumbersome to go through a voluminous document and search for the content where they need help. When the end user comes from a poor connectivity scenario, the problem becomes even more challenging as he/she cannot download the entire user manual. PES attempts to address these problems by making the user manual accessible to the user when he is operating the software. In order to achieve this, the entire user manual has been structured in a user friendly manner and the preparation of user manual has been automated. Field level descriptions are given in user manual which pop-up to the end user as help text when he is entering the data in that field. Similarly, when the end user encounters an error message, additional helpful details on why the message is coming and how the user should address it are provided. All these are recorded as part of the user manual and whenever the user manual is updated, it automatically gets reflected in the software. After the user has become well-versed with the software, he can switch off the help text and it will no longer be displayed. The complete user manual is also available in audio mode as a computer-based tutorial.

9. CommonMastersManagement In an Enterprise Suite such as PES, there are likely to be many masters which will be commonly used across multiple applications. Such common masters have been identified and common data entry forms developed which are available to the entire suite as a service. Master data entered through any constituent application are stored in a single repository and made available across the entire PES. 10. CommonUtilities Certain common utilities such as management of alerts, FAQ etc. that are required across all applications of PES were identified and developed as common PES services for consumption by all PES applications. The data related to such common utilities are also stored in a common repository and made available to all applications. 11. ApplicationIntegration An Enterprise Suite has to make data seamlessly available across organizational boundaries. In order to facilitate this, two types of integration requirements were identified: - Data sharing requirement In this scenario, data entered in one application is required to be used by another application. The data itself is shared through DB functions and by exposing read-only views to requesting applications. - Form-level sharing This scenario arises when a user logs into one of the applications but requires to enter data in a form belonging to another PES application. Instead of requiring the user to open the other application, PES allows the current application to call the concerned form as a service from the other application. This considerably enhances user experience. This feature is also useful when a State government chooses not to adopt some of the PES applications. In such a situation, the data provided by any of these applications (which have not been adopted by the State government) will not be available to the consuming PES applications. In such a situation, PES provides the concerned form 37

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even though the State has not activated the application for its users. When subsequently the State Government chooses to adopt the application, the data already entered will be automatically available. All PES applications are fully compliant with the code directory exposed by Local Government Directory (LGD) i.e., all of them use the codes provided by LGD. One important implication of integrating with LGD is the impact on all client applications of LGD whenever there is a change in the directory. For eg., when a village Panchayat is merged with an urban area, the erstwhile village panchayat no longer exists and all the client applications will have to respond to this change propagated by LGD and make necessary changes to the data as per the business requirements of their application domain. While some of the changes such as a name change may have no impact on client applications, it may be possible to automatically incorporate certain other changes. Still others may need manual intervention. How a particular change in LGD impacts an application depends on the business requirement of that application. All PES applications are designed to handle the impact propagated by changes in LGD. They provide appropriate interfaces to the end users to handle each scenario of change that is likely to happen in LGD. Whenever such changes take place, LGD sends notifications to all the client applications about the nature of changes and details of such changes. All applications are given a time frame within which they have to make appropriate changes to their affected data. 12. ApplicabilitytoULBsandLineDepartments Though PES was conceptualized and designed under ePanchayat MMP, in view of its applicability to Urban Local Bodies and Line Departments, the software applications have been designed to facilitate their use by users of Urban Local Bodies and Line departments as well. The three columns under Can be used by in Table 1 indicates the applicability of each constituent application of PES to urban local bodies and line departments. 13. Deploymentarchitecture The constituent applications of PES are hosted as separate applications with their own applicationspecific URL. The data of each application is maintained in a single database of PES but hosted in separate schema of the same database so that the data are logically partitioned. In the case of Local Government Directory, two databases are being maintained: - one database is used by LGD to manage all the transactions related to formation of land regions and local governments. This database is not exposed for querying by software other than LGD. - another database is the updated database, available only in view mode, which can be accessed by all applications which are part of PES as well as those which are outside it.

4. Conclusion The automation of enterprise-wide functions of Panchayats is expected to bring about a sea change in the functioning of Panchayats in terms of efficiency, transparency and accountability. This was a prerequisite to position Panchayats as efficient organizations with a high degree of credibility which in turn would help restore the faith the citizens and Central and State Governments repose on Panchayats. However, building a user-friendly Enterprise suite is just one small step towards the utopian future. There are many challenges which need to be addressed. These include among others: - Standardization of metadata and data standards across the country. The effort is already on in this direction. The variability in languages and the freedom given to states by the federal set up of the Indian Union pose tremendous challenges. - Providing repetitive trainings - The task of providing extensive training to the end users of PES till it is internalized is en extremely challenging task because of the large number of users to be trained, their limited capabilities and ability to communicate only in local language and the limited availability of training organizations to provide training across the country. The issues are being 38

Rama Hariharan et al. / Enterprise Suite for Panchayats

attempted through various strategies including cascade mode of training, computer-based tutorials, help lines etc. Availability of robust computing & connectivity environment remains a challenge and is likely to be addressed under National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) and full roll out of ePanchayat MMP.

This is only the first version of PES. Several rounds of user consultations and training are expected to enrich the suite and make it more and more useful to all stakeholders. It is hoped that PES will make a small but sure dent in achieving this vision. References 1. DARPG, GoI. Citizen Centric Governance The Heart of Governance, Second Administrative Reforms Commission, Twelfth Report, February, 2009. 2. National and State-wise ISNA, BPR and DPR documents. Available at http://ePanchayat.gov.in. 3. D.C. Misra et al. Identifying common software needs of Rural Local Governments in India eGovernance for Panchayats., Journal of eGovernance. 35 (2012) 40-47 2012, ISSN 18787673/12/$27.50 IOS Press 4. Rama Hariharan & D.C. Misra. ServicePlus A Metadata-based Rural Service Delivery Portal Framework, Proceedings of the National Conference (http://darpg.gov.in/darpgwebsite_cms/Document/file/Compendium.pdf ) on eGovernance 2011.

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Survey on Various Initiatives and Challenges of Mobile based Public Services in India
Ranjan Kumar 1 *, Manish Kumar1, Kapil Kant Kamal1, Zia Saquib1, Kavita Bhatia 2 ABSTRACT This paper surveys the various initiatives and challenges of Mobile based Public Services in India. Mobile based channels e.g. SMS, USSD, IVRS, GPRS/3G and Mobile Applications using these channels are being explored for public services delivery. The DeitY (Department of Electronics and Information Technology), Government of India in collaboration with CDAC Mumbai (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), has established a centralized platform MSDP (Mobile e-Governance Services Delivery Platform) to facilitate this. Department is also considering single point of access e.g. a single number (166) for all the channels and for all the public services at central as well as the state specific public services. This paper discusses various challenges addressed or still to be addressed by this centralized platform to cater its services to a very vast and diverse country, India. This paper also discusses various models of routing of data/information from various departments to the citizens and vice versa through mobile channels. Keywords: SMS, USSD, IVRS, e-Governance, m-Governance, Services, Notifications, Mobile Applications, App Store, Short Code, Long Code, MSDP 1 Introduction SDP combines mobile based channels (SMS, USSD, IVRS, GPRS/3G and Mobile Applications) and provide a unified view to the citizen and the government departments. One common thing with all these channels is that data/information is either being pushed to the citizen by the departments or being pulled by citizens from various departments (State/Central). SMS (Short Message Service) is a short message consisting of 160 characters only and is supported by any mobile phone and can be categorised in following types. - Push SMS (Mobile Terminated) - Pull SMS (Mobile Originated) USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Services Data) is a session based service unlike SMS which is a store and forward service. USSD services are provided with two different service features: - USSN (Unstructured Supplementary Services Notify) - USSR (Unstructured Supplementary Services Response) IVRS (Interactive Voice Response System) is a channel for delivering public services through voice. GPRS/3G provide the access to the Internet. Mobile Applications are applications developed in some mobile platform language and citizen can download them from App Store and install on the phone and access the services.
1

CDAC Mumbai, India

* Corresponding Author: (Email: mail4ranjan@gmail.com, Telephone: +91-9324692411)

2

DeitY, New Delhi, India

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2 Identification of the Department Through SMS Push SMS (Mobile Terminated) is used by the departments to send alerts/notifications to the citizens related to various services. Here it is required that a particular department must be identified when the citizen receives the SMS. With arrangement with the telecom operator MSDP platform assigns a sender id to the department. When the citizen receives the SMS, he/she can see this sender id and can identify the sending department. The sender Id has the following format: XY-ZZZZZZ. First two characters before hyphen identifies the telecom operator and the circle and the last six characters identifies the department. Here the challenge is that, these six characters should be selected in such a way that the citizen can easily identify the department. 3 Using the Push SMS Facility There are two possible ways in which, department can be provided the push SMS facility: - Provide this facility through web portal: This is useful for the department where sufficient automation is not there and they want to push the SMSes manually through portal. MSDP platform provides each department separate credentials for login in to the portal (http://services.mgov.gov.in) and use the push SMS facility. - Provide this facility through programming interface: This way the department which has the back end system automated, can integrate with programmatic API (Application Programming Interface) of MSDP Platform and can push SMS on certain events. Following diagram shows the flow:

4 Using the Pull SMS Facility MSDP platform provides one single code (short code / long code)* where the citizens are supposed to send the query SMS (currently 51969/166). To avail the pull SMS facility, the department has to provide following two things: - SMS format, in which citizen will send the SMS query. - API of the service to be integrated. SMS Format and routing mechanism: As there is a single number where SMS for all the services of the departments (Central/State) arrives, there must be some well defined format for SMS creation. SMS format is crucial for the routing of incoming query SMS. Following is the one popular format.

In general, keyword identifies the department, sub-keyword identifies the services of that particular department and parameter/arguments are mostly service specific data. So in case of Central Government department, keyword can uniquely identify the department. For example "UPSC" can be keyword for the services of Union Public Service Commission. Further to this UPSC can use sub-keyword for the specific services e.g. "RESULT" and the parameter/argument can be the Roll Number. 41

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When the SMS reaches to MSDP via telecom operator network, routing of the SMS is easily can be done based on the routing table. Routing table can have unique mapping of the keywords with the respective url of APIs of the department.

But the case is different for the state government departments. There are various government departments in states which are there in other States also. So keyword alone will not be able to identify the departments uniquely across the states. So in this case we need to have another identifier for the state. One option here was to use the numeric code of the state provided by the DeitY. But remembering the numeric code of the state is difficult for citizens, so other option opted was to use two to three length characters to identify the state. So, for State specific services the keyword will identify that particular state. For example keyword GOA will identify Goa State, MH will identify Maharashtra State. For each state two to three length characters have been finalized and being used. Sub-keyword identifies the specific departments or services directly of that State. Routing of SMS in this case happens in two ways depending on the following two situations: 1. There is a single server in state to receive all the SMS of that State. 2. There may by a separate server of a particular department or a government organization in the state for example Maharashtra Public Service Commission in Maharashtra. 3. There is a single server for all the services in a particular central government department. In the first case routing table contains the unique mapping of the keyword for state (two to three characters) with the respecting urls of APIs of the server of that state. In the second case routing table contains the unique mapping of the keyword for the department with the respective url of API of the department. Third case is similar to the second case where the routing table contains the unique mapping of the keyword for the department with the respective url of the API of the department.

In all three cases routing is done based on the keyword(state/department) and forwarding the sms to the mapped url. Once the department receives the SMS, it is the department's decision to how to process the SMS. Department can further route to another server (if there are dedicated servers for different services) or process the message itself. MSDP passes the whole SMS message with other different parameter to the departments. Other parameters passed are: - Mobile Number - Time Stamp 42

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Operator Name Area Code Message (SMS)

Other parameters apart from the message can be used by the department to further customize the service or to perform some level of authentication. For example, using mobile number passed, the department can ensure that response message are delivered only if the mobile number matches with the registered mobile number. Department's API Integration: To avail the pull SMS facility the department has to provide an API of the service. The API provided by the department may be of various type. For example: - HTTP GET - HTTP POST - Web Service Depending on the type of API, MSDP platform needs to pass the parameters received in SMS, to the API, in different ways and with using different clients. HTTP interface requires HTTP client, whereas Web Service interface requires the web service client. So the routing table also has various other fields which helps the MSDP to select the client accordingly.

Common Routing Architecture for All the Channels

Telecom Operator forwards the data received at short code 166 from the citizen, in different formats specific to the channel (SMS / USSD / IVRS) used, to specific gateway (SMS Gateway / USSD Gateway / Voice Gateway). These gateways, after processing the data, forwards to the MSDG(Mobile Services Delivery) [1] gateway which applies the various routing logic and then route the data to the appropriate government department directly or through NSDG / SSDG[2]. The reply from the department is sent back to the citizen through the same path.

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6 Using USSN Facility USSN (Unstructured Supplementary Services Notify) can be used by the departments to send alerts/notifications to the citizens related to various services in a flash message. Similar to SMS, this facility can be provided in the following two ways: - Provide this facility through web portal. This is useful for the department where sufficient automation is not there and they want to push the USSD message manually through portal. - Provide this facility through programming interface. This way the department which has the back end system automated, can integrate with programmatic API (Application Programming Interface) to push USSD message. Message flow is also the same as that of SMS. 7 Using USSR Facility USSR (Unstructured Supplementary Services Response) is similar to SMS pull in the functionality, but the difference is that, instead of sending a message to the short code, here short code itself is dialled by prefixing with * and postfixing with # for example dialling *166#. Once dialled, citizen gets a menu for services on the screen. Citizen needs to select the menu number to select a particular service. Challenge in case of USSR is to create a single list of menu for thousands of services of all the states and the central government departments. One solution to this problem is that short code can be appended with unique code for the departments in the following way: *166*XYZ# XYZ can be the unique code for department. For example if MPSC has the unique code 100. Then by dialling *166*100# will provide the menu of the services of MPSC.

8 Short Code vs. Long Code Short/long codes are basically a number, which citizen can use to access any service. The short codes has the advantage that it can easily be remembered and this helps in popularizing the codes easily but the biggest disadvantage is that these numbers are telecom operator specific, meaning by, it is tricky to select a short code, as it may available with one operator but may not be available with other operator as the same code might being used by the other operator for some other service. Other big challenge is to get these short code configuration at all the telecom operators and revenue share. The long code is though difficult to remember but the good part is that the code is to be taken and configured from the only one telecom operator. As USSD allows only three digit number, long code can't be used with long code. The other major difference in short code and the long code is because of the user's charges for the use of channels(SMS, USSD, IVRS). In case of long code the citizens are charged p2p (person to person) rates. So when the citizen use the channel e.g. SMS he/she are charged according to the channel plan of the citizen. But in case of short code they are not able to go for p2p rates. The MSDP platform opted for best of both the worlds. The case where the citizens are directly using the channel, it went for short code, with keeping in mind that short codes are easier to remember. There is one case where citizens will not use the channels directly, is while accessing the public services through mobile applications. In this case, long codes can be used and the citizen will be charged only as per their plans. In case of MSDP, to get a short code uniform across the operators, required intervention from Department of Telecommunications and TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) and the short code 166 has 44

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been allotted for mobile governance across all the channels and the telecom operators. Another big challenge is to make telecom operator agree for a minimum uniform rates for channel usage. 9 Common Portal for All the Mobile Channels Providing the common portal for accessing and managing all the mobile channels is a new kind of initiative. The main web portal http://mgov.gov.in provides the general information about the mobile governance initiative and various integration status with government departments. Other sub-portal is for common services (http://services.mgov.gov.in). Following are the common features across the mobile channels: - Registration of the Government Departments - Manual use of services (e.g. bulk SMS/USSD/Voice through excel sheet) - Various status of used services. - Request and approval of sender ids. - Request for increasing credit limit. 10 Mobile Applications and APPSTORE [1] have described in detail about the various initiatives in India for Mobile Applications development and the application store and arising business model around it. It is required to have the following views of the application store: - Citizen's View - Department's View - Developer's View - Administrator's View Citizens should either go to the app store portal or can browse the applications in the app store installed on the phone as an application and browse various applications and download the application of choice. Only the applications which citizens can use, are available for browse by the citizen. Citizens can download the free applications directly and paid applications after payment. There are certain applications which are only relevant to the department officials. 11 Challenges in Getting the Unform Service Charges for Short Code Based Pull Channels It is very difficult to get the uniform service charges for the short code based pull channels until it is intervened by DoT/TRAI. To avoid this, one solution can be to start the conversation with a missed call. Once the citizen gives a missed call, then a SMS or USSD menu can be pushed to the citizen and start the conversation. 12 Local Language Support SMS Gateway component of MSDP, supports messages in Unicode. So citizens / departments can use the SMS services in the local languages, provided mobile handset supports the Unicode. The language support in USSD is being tested, right now. Both in case of SMS and USSD, the challenge is that the mobile handset may or may not support the Unicode. One solution to this problem can be that while registration for any service, department may ask / check the Unicode support in the mobile handset of the citizen. If the handset supports Unicode, then it can be used for SMS / USSD in local languages. Otherwise plain English text can be used. For IVRS, citizens are asked for different language options by pressing different keys. Challenge here is to make voice based menu in different languages. Other challenge is to convert text in different languages to speech. Text To Speech Synthesis Systems for Indian Languages (TTS-IL) [7] developed by CDAC, is being used for this purpose. Language support in the mobile applications developed, are constrained by the language support in that particular language and handset. 45

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13 Conclusions Mobile Governance is catching up very fast in the India. Various mobile based channels are being leveraged to deliver the services to the citizens through mobile devices. SMS is most widely used for status, alerts and notifications. USSD is now catching up slowly. USSD has great potential for mobile service delivery as it works even on the low cost handsets with limitation that it works only on the GSM handsets. IVR systems are being used since long time but, now it is being integrated with government department's back -end systems to provide automated service delivery. Location based systems, SIM Toolkits are being explored and are in the pipeline. Mobile Applications are also catching up as the smart phone are available at low cost in India. Mobile Application Store is a big initiative in this direction. Acknowledgments This work has been supported by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India. We are thankful to all the members of MSDP team of C-DAC, Mumbai for their direct as well as indirect contribution for this paper. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable insights and comments. References 1. Ranjan Kumar, Manish Kumar, Kapil Kant Kamal, "Indian Ecosystem for Mobile based Service", 8th International Conference on E-Governance (ICEG-2011), 17-18 October 2011 2. Vijay Jain, Rajeev Srivastava, Ranjan Kumar, Rahul Upadhyay, Kapil Kant Kamal, "Breaking Barrier to Technology: e-Governance Messaging Middleware", In the proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV2011) which took place in Tallinn, Estonia during 26 28 September, 2011. 3. Jennifer Decruz Owen Allan, Narainee Rambajun, Sanjay P Sood, Victor Mbarika, Rajeev Agrawal, Zia Saquib, "The eGovernment Concept: A Systematic Review of Research and Practitioner Literature", in the proceedings of the conference Innovation in Information Technology, 2006, publisher IEEE. 4. http://mgov.gov.in 5. http://apps.mgov.gov.in 6. http://services.mgov.gov.in 7. http://deity.gov.in/ 8. http://www.cdacmumbai.in/index.php/research_and_publications/projects/text_to_speech_synthesis_s ystems_for_indian_languages_tts_il

46

Heuristic Evaluation of E-Government Portal of India (india.gov.in)

Sandeep Kaur 1 * ABSTRACT This paper heuristically evaluates Indian Government portal (www.india.gov.in) in an attempt to explain usability problems found on the portal through a detailed view of web design principles. This evaluation will draw attention to a mammoth of responsibilities in the successful development of an administrative portal in a country with extensive socioeconomic, in addition to cultural, discrepancies. The results will facilitate the improvement of the portal for greater citizen-government interaction effectively by identifying the current usability problems found in the portal. Keywords: Heuristics, portal, India, usability, citizen-government interaction Purpose To appraise the front-end principles by a heuristic approach to dissect the significance of a bilingual, mission-mode development gateway that principally serves as a simple, reachable, socially inclusive single-window entry to information and services of the Indian Government at all levels. Research Methodology Descriptive qualitative analysis provides a valuable insight into and a profound understanding of the portal by contemplating upon the heuristically recognised key principles in the design and development of an E-government portal. A heuristic design model forms the framework for development of portal. Research Implications A heuristic evaluation of select principles of E-government portals forms a conscientious theoretical framework obligatory in fostering citizen adoption. Findings of this research is an endeavour to provide assistance to Indias E-government initiative as the subject of outsized research in the future. Furthermore, these findings will also be of potential significance to officials accountable for Egovernment by providing some recommendations to help the developers to make the site more userfriendly. 1. Introduction E-government enables a single-window access to government information and services to its citizenry. In this context, National e-government portals have emerged as influential administrative tools enabling a transparent and accountable government. Being conceptualized as a tool for integrated service delivery (Tambouris and Wimmer, 2005), a portal facilitates opportunities for participatory democracy (Fang, 2002). A successful portal acts as a gateway to government websites, provides appropriate access to services with suitable guidelines/policies and easily recognizable Universal Resource Locator (URL), transparency throughavailability of contact information of officials, graphical user interface, downloadable applications forms, and privacy and security concerns (Durrant, 2005). Hence, these portals have emerged as citizencentric service delivery mechanisms overcoming decipherable bureaucratic complexities in addition to longer queues. Many guidelines have emerged to evaluate E-government portals to satisfy its users and
1

Academics, Inida *Corresponding Author: (Email: simysan@gmail.com,)

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enable interaction with citizens. Plethora of difficulties arises among users to interact with text, graphics and so on in web pages.

2. Benefits of the portal Following are the benefits that a portal provides to its citizenry: - Avoidance of personal interaction (Hansen, 1995; Meuter et al., 2000) - Control over service delivery (Dabholkar, 1996; Zhu et al., 2002) - Anytime anywhere accessibility (Meuter et al., 2000; Zhu et al., 2002) - Cost effectiveness (Liao & Cheung, 2001; Moon, 2002; Mohammad et al., 2009) - Customization of ICT-enabled government services (Van Riel et al., 2001) - Increase government efficiency and cost-effectiveness, accessibility of public information and makes government more accountable (Baker, 2004; Roach, 2007) One of the key objectives under the E-government agenda in many countries is to achieve a one-stop government portal (Dias and Rafael, 2007). Instituting more than 2,000 Central and State government websites, Indian E-government system has already made headway in establishing its presence online. This empirical study applies heuristic approach to evaluate usability of the Indian e-government portal www.india.gov.in to identify a high proportion of problems (Fu et al., 2002).

3. Reasons for Selection of Indian E-government Portal (india.gov.in)

The National Portal of India www.india.gov.in, developed in 2005 with the collaborative effort of various Indian government ministries and departments at the Central/State/District level enables a single-window information access of the various Indian Government entities. Designed and maintained by National Informatics Centre (NIC) , DIT, MoCIT, Government of India, this portal aims to reduce the difficulties in both access and interaction with government bodies to turn its vision statement All major public services online by 2015 into reality. Easy navigation with a human centered design, state-of-the-art backend tools and technologies for a fast and secure 24*7 access, automated tool to carry the health of all hyper links, Personalisation/Customisation of bi-lingual content based on the users individual profile and preferences are some of the salient usability features of the portal. Current trends in the portal include: - Provision of 1635 G2C services; 93 possible business related information; 67 G2G services; 66 G2E services. - Overseas section that provides information right from opportunities to study in India to an advisory bible for foreign tourists on the rules to be followed in the country. - Know India section housing information and providing enlightenment on all the elements of India. - Directories of important weblinks, telephones, government contacts besides allowing search for STD codes, ISD codes and PIN codes for any citizen residing in India. 48

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Provision of 195 important documents and reports; 165 important Application Forms of Central/State/UT Governments; 21 Central Acts passed by the Indian Parliament ever since 1834 by searching the Indiacode Information System (INCODIS); 35 rules passed by the Parliament and the
State Legislative Assemblies; 19 welfare schemes; 16 tenders (open or limited) and procurement notifications.

4. Objectives of the study The prime objective of the study is to evaluate heuristics of the select principles of a single-window access to government information and services in India through the development gateway portal www.india.gov.in. 5. Literature review Holliday (2002) evaluated E-government implementation progress of 16 states of East and Southeast Asia by analysing government homepages and sites to measure their visibility and utility. Zhang and von Dran (2001) argued that E-government portals are similar to E-commerce websites wherein attributes such as ease of navigation, clear layout of information, up-to-date information, search tool, and accuracy of information play important roles in providing benefits to users in terms of website quality. Numerous sets of heuristics can be applied during heuristic evaluation (Folmer and Bosch,2004). Many of them have common factors, such as consistency, task match, appropriate visual presentation, user control, memory-load reduction, error handling and guidance and support. According to Nielsen (1993), usability combines quality components of the user interface for a product or service, thus promoting a bottom-up approach to democracy (Mofleh, S. and Wanous, M., 2009). The more user-friendly and usable the government website, the more the country is heading towards full implementation of E-government services (Fagan and Fagan 2001, Silcock 2001). Nielsens (1994) defined usability as learnability (the factor of understanding the behavior of the site), efficiency (how effective the user in completing the tasks), memorability (if the page is usable, the users do not have to learn how to accomplish tasks again, when they return after a certain period of time), errors (the number of errors should be low, and in case of an error, the users should be able to recover easily from the errors), satisfaction (this element refers to the satisfaction of the users). Following are a few of Nielsens (2001) 113 guidelines based on how to construct homepages, and arranged them in to topics: - Links should be differentiated and scannable; - Primary navigation of a site should be placed on a highly noticeable part of the page; - Over-designing a site should be avoided, because too many font styles, other text formatting and design-elements can detract the users attention from the main message of the content. Nielsen (1997) found that 79 % of the users always scan the pages, while only 16 % of them read every word of the text. Moreover, Nielsen (2008) estimated the time users spend with every additional 100 words, and he identified that it is 4.4 seconds, it means, that counting with the reading speed of higher literacy users (250 words per minute), the users will read only 18% of this additional part. Another interesting finding of Nielsen (2008) is the connection between the amount of text on a page, and the amount, which users are willing to read. He found that the curve indicating this connection is rapidly declining: on a page, that contains 111 words or less, the users will read half of the content. On a page, which displays 593 words (that was the average in Nielsens research), the visitors will read 28 % of it.

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Eye-tracking studies (Nielsen,2006: 2009) show that the average users reading pattern is the following: two horizontal, and one vertical stripes. After entering a page, users first scan through the lines of text at the top of the page, then they restart this process after jumping down some lines, and finally they glace at the left side of the screen, scanning through the starting words of each lines. However, the number of horizontal movements can vary: sometimes users make a third horizontal stripe, making the pattern look like an E, other times they just scan through once, making the pattern look like an inverted L These patterns appear on a picture called heat map, in which different colors indicate where users looked most. Usually, the red color shows the most viewed areas, then yellow is for fewer glance, blue indicates the fewest, while grey areas show the invisible parts of the page (Nielsen 2006). Jarrett et al. (2008) published a heat map of a form. They found that users looked most at the labels and fields of the form and demonstrated that the participants read the left end of the fields. OConnell (2010) refers to a research conducted by Nielsen, in which the impact of the word formatting was investigated. The findings showed that although the users scanned the information carried by big red letters, they actually did not read it. In order to make a website more usable for lower-literacy users, the following should be considered. Nielsen (2005) indicates some guidelines to apply, for instance the most important information should be placed in the first paragraphs, the animations should be avoided, the navigation should be easy to understand, the search option should help in case of misspellings, and give short results. Summers et al. (2004) suggests that an intra-site search result page should contain lots of white space, simple and large titles, and limited number of results displayed. They also claims that flat site hierarchy and a guided paths provided can highly increase the usability for lower-literacy users. It has to be mentioned, that making sites usable for lower-literacy users will result in improved usability for all users. Setting guidelines for lower-literacy users leads to the next area of discussion, which is writing web content. 6. Nielsens (1994) usability guidelines: Nielson has identified ten principles, varying from visibility of system status to help and documentation: Visibility of system status - The site should keep users informed about what is going on through appropriate feedback within a reasonable time. Probably the two most important things that users need to know are "Where am I?" and "Where can I go next?" Match between system and the real world - The site should use the user language, follow realworld conventions, make information appeared in a natural and logical order. User control and freedom - The site should make undo and redo functions available during interaction and support users to leave the site at all times. Consistency and standards - The site should keep the same design features and follow platform conventions through the site. Error prevention - The site should support users to overcome errors and prevent the same problem occurrence. Recognition rather than recall - The site should make objects, actions and options easy to remember. In addition, instruments on the site should be visible and easily retrievable. Flexibility and efficiency of use - The site should consider the usage for both novice users and experienced users. Furthermore, it allows users to tailor frequent actions.

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Aesthetic and minimalist design - Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility. Help user recognize, diagnose and recover from errors - The site should indicate error messages. Error messages should precisely indicate the problem and constructively suggest a solution. Help and documentation - The site should provide help and documentation that can be easy to search, focus on the users tasks, list concrete steps to support users.

Furthermore, during users interaction with online services, e-government should respect their users at all times (Reddick, 2005). Therefore, the existing Nielsens usability heuristics are extended by adding three further heuristics: - Interoperability - The site should make all service parts, design elements, the site functions work as a whole to support user task completion. - Support and extend users skills - The site should support, extend and improve users current skills and knowledge when they perform the tasks. - Pleasurable and respectful interaction with users - The site should present a pleasant design and treat users with respect. Users interaction with the site should be enhanced by the quality of the site.

Thus, a detailed heuristic checklist was designed to extend the inspection to find particular usability problems and also to avoid the bias that might occur if evaluators did not cover each heuristic principle.
7. Research Methodology A descriptive qualitative analysis of the National Portal of India www.india.gov.in was conducted to assess its status in terms of the select usability heuristics. Heuristic evaluation approach evaluates the design of a given website to define any usability problems that may exist (Nielsen, 1994; Pickard, 2007, p.231). Basically, Ahmed (2008), Ardito et al (2006), and Hvannberg et al (2006) showed that this approach enables evaluators to find obvious usability problems within a limited period of time. However, although evaluators are considered as sample users; they are not typical users for the target site. Thus, the results may be regarded as suspect because they do not reflect actual users opinions. Heuristic evaluation is based on guidelines, i.e. heuristic principles that evaluators use when they evaluate a site (Pickard, 2007, p.231, Brinck et al, 2002). For this research, Nielson's heuristic principles (1994, 2001) are considered in order to design an appropriate heuristic checklist consisting of a number of heuristic components which made up each principle. The parameters of the usability test covered a detailed set of 13 heuristics from a modified version of the Xerox Heuristic Evaluation: A System Checklist (1995). The first ten principles were derived from Nielsen and Molich (1990). The design of the portal in this study was evaluated according to the conceptual framework implicit in Nielsens (1994, 2000, 2002) ten usability heuristics for web sites. Content analysis of the E-government portal www.india.gov.in was conducted between May 2012 and August 2012. The select heuristics were developed in the presence of two experts, recorded, compiled and the results were drawn using descriptive statistics (see Appendix 1). Firstly, a content analysis of the portal was conducted to objectively measure a significant number of content features (Huzingh, 2000). A heuristics checklist was developed as an evaluation tool to explore the select attributes of the portal. A checklist is a mnemonic device that consists of a list of activities, 51

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items, and criteria used to perform a certain task. According to Scriven (2005), checklists reduce the chance of forgetting to check something important, are easier for the layperson to understand and validate than most theories or statistical analyses, and reduce the influence of the halo effect by forcing the evaluator to consider each relevant dimension of merit. Consequently, checklists can contribute to the improvement of validity, reliability, and credibility of an evaluation (Scriven, 2007). The checklist contains a set of questions under the following headings: (a) visibility of system status, (b) match between the system and the real world, (c) user control and freedom, (d) consistency and standards, (e) error handling, (f) recognition rather than recall, (g) flexibility, (h) privacy, (i) minimalist design, (j) help and documentation, (k) skills, and (l) pleasurable and respectful interaction with the user. Each numbered heuristic included a related set of questions designed to expand on that particular problem. Every heuristic in the select usability attributes was marked as Yes if it was found in the portal, or No, otherwise. The heuristics were then summed up to obtain the level of support for that attribute. Secondly, a coding mechanism was evolved for the checklist with regard to the select usability attributes along with its heuristics under investigation to draw inferences. 8. Coding Scheme Entire portal was examined in detail wherein respective heuristic under each select attribute was given a rank between 1 and 3 where, 1 meant Cant say, 2 meant Not present and 3 being Present. This coding scheme was adapted from Abdulhadi M. Eidaroos et als Heuristic Evaluation for eGovernment Websites in Saudi Arabia. The raw scores of the portal based on select heuristics were calculated. For ensuring a perfectly-designed portal, all of the heuristics should be made available for each attribute. In order for every attribute to be regarded as properly addressed, then at least 75% of the components need to be present.

9. Select principles and its respective heuristics

(Source: www.stcsig.org/usability/topics/articles/he-checklist.html) 10. Data analysis and interpretation A flawlessly designed portal needs to meet 100% of the heuristic components for each principle. Contrarily, this is not the case as reflected in table 1. 52

Sandeep Kaur / Heuristic Evaluation of E-Government Portal of India (india.gov.in)

The table shows the percentage of heuristic components that were met for each principle. With regard to the visibility of system status, there were 28 heuristic components of which Indian portal has met 61%. It can be seen that heuristics components were satisfied in Aesthetic and minimalist design as well as Interoperability. In order for each principle to be regarded as properly addressed, 75% of the heuristic components need to be mandatorily met. In this case, Help and documentation (87%) has been met in the Indian portal followed by Recognition rather than recall (82%) and Error prevention (80%). However, if the threshold is reduced to 50% then Match between system and the real world (70%) followed by Consistency and standards (69%), Skills (67%), Visibility of system status (61%) and Pleasurable and Respectful Interaction with the User (60%) have been successfully met. When considering all 291 heuristics, the results show that Consistency and standards achieved 38

heuristics whereas Recognition rather than recall met only 31 heuristics. These findings indicate that the portal is insignificant in performing well in meeting all the principles on the checklist. However, it can be seen that the Aesthetic and minimalist design and Interoperability performed better than the rest. Overall, the portal exhibits 71% of the heuristics. This could be due to the rules, designed by NIC. Despite these results, the designers of the portal need to pay more attention to usability issues.

11. Conclusion Findings of this study indicate that E-Government portal of India is in its nascent stage. At the moment, the portal is available to provide information; but with inappropriate design that does little to encourage users to utilize e-Government services. These problems may also undermine the successful establishment of e-Government in India. It is important developers, as well as the designers focus on usability aspects in order to improve the current position of e-Government in India. Further research will involve integrating the usability problems that were found in the design of portal as part of developing a comprehensive framework for e-Government portals. This could result in the integration of different more qualitative and quantitative approaches to obtain results that can help the development of e-Government portals more efficiently. 53

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References 1. Asiimwe, E, N and Lim, N. (2010) Usability of Government Websites in Uganda Electronic Journal of e-Government Volume 8 Issue 1 2010, (pp1 - 12). Available at: www.ejeg.com 2. Caldwell, B., Cooper, M., Reid, L.G. and Vanderheiden, G., 2008, web content accessibility guidelines 2.0. Available at: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/ accessed 3. Eidaroos, Abdulhadi M. et al (2006). Heuristic Evaluation for e-Government Websites in Saudi Arabia. Available at: https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspacejspui/bitstream/2134/5779/1/Heuristic%20Evaluation%20for%20eGovernment%20Websites%20in%20Saudi%20Arabia_final.pdf 4. Fostering e-Governance: Selected Compendium of Indian Initiatives. Available at: www.csisigegov.org/ppt/CSI2009Book240909.pdf 5. Garcia, A.C.B., Maciel, C. and Pinto, F.B., 2005. A Quality Inspection Method to Evaluate EGovernment Sites, Electronic Government: 4th International Conference, EGOV, August 22-26 2005, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg pp198-209. 6. Maheshwari, Bharat et al (2006). E-Government Portal Effectiveness: Managerial Considerations for Design and Development. Published in Foundations of E-government, ed. Ashok Aggrawal and V. Venkata Ramana. GIFT Publishing. New Delhi. pp: 258-269. Available at: http://www.csisigegov.org/1/27.pdf 7. Nielsen, J., 2001, Usability metrics. Available at: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010121.html 8. Pierotti, D. 1995, Heuristic Evaluation - A system checklist Society for Technical Communication. Available at: http://www.stcsig.org/usability/topics/articles/he-checklist.html 9. Selected Aspects of Interoperability in One-stop Government Portal of India. Available at: http://www.intgovforum.org/Substantive_2nd_IGF/Issues_of_Interoperability_in_portal_of_india.pdf 10. Second administrative reforms commission: twelfth report. Available at: http://arc.gov.in/arc_12th_report/arc_12th_Report.htm Webeferences 1. http://www.cips.org.in/public-sector-systems-governmentinnovations/documents/Indias_Approach_in_Constructing_One-Stop_Solution_Towards_eGovernment.pdf 2. http://www.wbiconpro.com/paperegovernment.pdf 3. http://www.law.muni.cz/sborniky/cofola2011/files/IT/informatika/Szerovay_Krisztina_5982.pdf 4. kth.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:527483/FULLTEXT01 5. http://www.tobii.com/Global/Analysis/Marketing/Research%20Paper/HCI%20and%20Usability/Web %20Site%20Usability-%20A%20Case%20Study%20of%20Student%20Perceptions.pdf 6. http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publications/jus/2009august/slone3.html 7. www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html

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Shared Service for E-Governance

Saket Gupta 1 * and Sanjog Ray1 ABSTRACT Information systems project in e-governance have high costs, lack of expertise and repeatedly developing similar functionality. A shared service center might provide common services to local government organizations without affecting the autonomy of organizations. It provides great flexibility for addition of new functionalities and services. In essence shared service has the capability of providing both economies of scale and economies of scope if implemented rightly. The goal of this paper is to explore the concept of shared service and to explain the process of execution of shared service center for e-governance in India. 1. Introduction Current economic situation demands opportunities for gaining efficiencies in service delivery. Costs of control and maintenance have become the prime concern in public management. The emphasis is not only on the innovation in e-governance but also on cost efficient operations of servers and data centers (SDC: State Data centers). Budget and expertise are limited and its high time that duplication of efforts, especially in municipality level should be ceased to gain benefits of the plans. A single window delivery mechanism for all services is the basic aim of all policies, an anytime anywhere service model. The goal of this paper is to explain the stepwise execution of shared service in organization and theoretical explanation of benefits of this execution. 2. Theoretical Background ICT resource sharing has its origin in computer science (sharing of DNS, proxy, time service, distributed file systems, shared database). In the last decade idea migrated to the consolidation of services such as human resource, payroll, and accounting, into shared services. Services generated from central organization and shared among local organization at the same horizontal level. Sharing of services introduces new opportunities for, especially small government organizations, to - outsource non-core activities, - dimension the capacity of their ICT infrastructures efficiently and - access and use ICT resources currently out-of-reach. The basic idea of SSC (shared service center) is based on the transaction cost theory. Transaction costs result from the transfer of property rights between parties and exist because of friction in economic systems. A firm will tend to expand until the cost of organizing an extra transaction within the firm becomes equal to the costs of carrying out the same transaction on the open market. The use of communication network and integration technology decrease transaction costs and enables organizations to focus on their core competencies. The SSC can gain economic benefits from specialization. The SSC specializes in providing certain services in the relationships with customers. After bearing large systemdevelopment costs, the SSC will face relatively small incremental costs as new government organizations make use of the systems, thus obtaining substantial economies of scale. Furthermore the technological
1

Indian Institute of Management, Indore (IIM-Indore), India *Corresponding Author: (Email: saket.pec@gmail.com, Telephone: +91- 7389469229)

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and organizational resources and expertise acquired during the development and operation of a system may be transferable to other systems, resulting in economies of scope. Principal-agent theory deals with the relationship between the principal and agent based on the division of labor, information asymmetry and environment and partner behavior. Local government organizations are the principle and the SSC is the agent. The agent makes decisions, which influence the local organizations. This theory takes the agency costs, the principal costs of monitoring and control and agents guaranteed costs as remaining welfare loss, as efficiency criterion and recommends those institutional arrangements, which minimize the agency costs. 3. Shared Service Execution Process:

Identification Governing Board is the lone actor in this stage. Here, all the suggestions are initiated and appreciated. The suggestions can be from an Advisory Board, a consortium of managers, staff etc. These suggestions for Shared service are received and prioritized by Governing Board. Here, we can also have a dedicated panel for identification of areas. (ITES related areas to be jotted down). The candidate areas for SSC (Shared Services Center) in an organization are Finance, HR, Supply chain, Customer and IT. Assessment The purpose of assessment is to foster consistent and complete evaluations of proposed shared service prior to approval. By careful analysis of subjects (covered below) a proposed Shared Service can be successfully implemented and produce intended results. 56

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Strategic Direction and Vision: The proposed shared service should be in line with the companys vision. Here, purpose and support for the SSC is studied. Identification of scope of the Shared Service and Present State analysis: This starts with description of like-services currently performed. Then the problems to be solved or opportunities to gain in current situation are discussed. Finally, scope is defined which includes: description and location including feature sets, proposed service provider and consumer, Service levels, roles of provider and consumer, Alternatives considered and proposed changes in business process. Operating Model Breadth and cost of Deployment: Two factors are discussed: Technology and Cost. Technology consideration includes proposed technology and need for re-engineering, Disaster Recovery and Continuity of Operations requirements and lastly any maintenance windows by provider that will impact consumer agencies. Cost Analysis includes: Cost model, Pricing Models, Funding sources and most importantly Total Return on Investment. Organizational and Staff impact and Change Management Strategy: Change Management strategy include describing the changes and how they will be successfully managed (Organizational, personal, technical, financial, process, etc.) and describing the change control process and changes to address. Organizational and staff impact includes: Changes in current job mix, cross culture problems, support for SSC workforce (Training, job enrichment etc.), required skill-set and other SSC related classifications. Business Case: Here, cost benefit analysis is done. Steps include analysis of targeted savings, service quality impact and improvements, business opportunities provided, incentives to consumer and service provider and description how the benefits will be realized by consumers and provider. Risk Implementation Roadmap: Complete brief of transition approach, teams, costs, technology, facilities, other resources, schedule, risks/mitigations and barriers and plans to overcome. Apart from above other financial considerations can be handled by asking following 3 questions: - Does the proposed shared service make financial sense? - What do shared service providers need to finance a shared service offering? - What do shared service consumers need to purchase a shared service offering? The main actors here are Governing Body and Assessment team which consist of members from provider and consumer both. Design In the design phase, organizations define, in detail, the components of the new shared services operation. The shared services operating model should remain at the heart of the effort, outlining the goals and strategic objectives for the design team. The deliver developed contains following: Business process Design, Redesigning of Organization, Functional Characteristics of new SSC, Resource requirements and designing of enabling Technology, Create Workforce hiring/ recruitment/transition plans, Develop Training Plan and Management Development Program, Design Facilities, Design Service management approach details. Government Process Re-engineering one of the critical elements of e-Gov projects, this includes focus of Transformation rather than Translation, Effected by closely working with Departments by following best practices of change management. The major work here will be done by separate teams with relevant expertise but there must be a close integration of all the deliverables. This is

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to maintain a holistic design and meets the strategic objectives of the new organization. Internal Capacity Building is vital part of this step. It includes: Under NeGP, E governance Consultancy Support to Departments through CeG - Process study (as is to be) - Gap Analysis - Functional requirement Specification - Detailed Project Report - RFP preparation - Bid process management Continuous Trainings/ workshops/Conferences Build and Deploy The build and deploy phase moves the shared services program beyond theory so that the shared services center organization, processes and technology take physical form. Deliverables from this phase bring the shared services vision to life, creating the processes, systems and facility outlined and approved in the design phase. Organizations prepare the shared services center and the operating units to receive the new processes and systems. The final deliverable of this phase is a successfully transitioned shared services operation and workforce. Build phase consist of steps: Develop Service Management Processes, Manage Budget and Schedule, Performance support and training materials, Build Facility, Recruit workforce, Create Service level agreements, Define KPIs, Communication Plan, Build organization and conduct deployment plan. Deploy phase consist of steps: Execute Deployment Plan, Conduct Training and work Shadowing, Testing of Shared Service Center: Pilot > Group1 > Group 2 and Execute workforce transition plan. Future Operation: After deployment, Regional Centers can be formed based on Core Business and Language. A strategic and Tactical 3rd party Business Partners should be made. To increase performance of this newly-formed SSC, dedicated transformational teams, effective Performance management system and good (3rd Party) Training and Coaching should be there in place. Apart from this, a good Governance System is very crucial. The issues with bad governance can be - Inadequate risk assessment resulting in a weak risk framework, - Lack of management ownership and participation - Change control procedures not enforced leading to increased cost, risk, business disruption - Processes for escalation of issues and dispute resolution are weak Solutions for same - Conduct a current state risk assessment - Test a sample of key controls - Review of governance procedures, roles and responsibilities - Test procedures for change control and issue resolution - Global Governance Committees: Multiple 3rd Party relationships, Dedicated 3rd party Relationship Managers, Standard Performance Management (SLAs), Global Pricing Strategies and contracts. - Review and progress against Budget - Review and adjust staff support - Finally, adding an upgrade path 58

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Other benefits include: Clear separation of responsibilities, Effective quality assurance, Effectiveness and ease in adopting changes, Defined (quality) standards for input/processing/output, Establishment of internal customer and supplier relationship management, Concentration on core operation in the various business areas, Standardized processes, Established performance production and control through service level agreements, Standardized processes and reporting, Company-wide utilization of available knowledge, Higher information consistency and Better information analysis and decision making Critical Success Factors The following factors must be in place to ensure the success of SSC: - The governance structure should be formally adopted and implemented - The Shared Services Governing Board is formed, and is: - Reviewing and approving recommended strategies and priorities for enterprise utility shared services - Making business decisions on enterprise utility shared service assessments, business cases, and adoption rates - Fostering state level commitment to implement shared services - Removing barriers and providing support to providers and consumers - Experienced and expert Leadership. Other management selection should be effective in achieving targeted benefits and facilitate successful transition. - A sufficient level of experienced support is available to managers and staff who lack fundamental capacity and skills to manage the change to shared services. Effective change management is essential to care for our staff and guide the intended changes. - Project management support must be available to guide successful implementation. - Startup funding is available as approved in each shared service assessment. This enables development by the provider and transition to the new service for consumers. - Building new culture - Balancing business process redesign and reshaping of roles and technology - In terms of the ongoing operations for a share services model, there are four key success factors: - monitoring and managing costs; - accountability issues; - use of service level agreements; and - Performance accountability. 59

Towards E-governance in the Cloud

Responsibilities of Service Provider: Key responsibilities originate right from Identification phase and can be stated as: Selection of the optimal location, Execution of a feasibility study and development of a business case, Change management, Risk management & Financial concerns, Project management and administration, SAP configuration, Tax concerns, Service management, Human resources, Post-implementation services and finally up gradation of the SSC with the advent of new technologies. Citizen Service Delivery Models: - Implementation Model- Public Private Partnership Model( PPP) - Business Model BOOT( Build Own Operate & Transfer) - Transaction Charges based model - Based on category of services - Based on Slabs( Transaction Volumes) - Pay As U Use Model Shared Service with Existing system and Management Over the years, shared services have evolved at a steady but relatively incremental pace. Early SSOs typically covered only one of a limited range of functions (IT, finance, and human resources), SSOs today are looking across multiple functions. They are expanding the scope of functions to include capabilities such as marketing, sales, engineering, R&D, and real estate. Where an early SSO might have served a small number of business units or geographies, companies today are applying shared services across the enterprise and across continents. 4. Adoption of Shared Service The successful adoption of shared service depends on the combination of factors as below: Process: The translation process includes ideological change from traditional decentralized towards new networked approach. There are resistances by the employees which are directly affected by this change. Thus, a proper reorientation is required with complete clearance on vision and mission of shared service. People: Limitation in the number of advocators and the change in attitude towards shared service is big problem; Again the employees directly affected may not be willing to give sacrifices for the adoption of new process. Policy: Favorable regulatory environment is the need for the change. There must be policies in support of changes in the internal environment to facilitate the adoption of shared service. 5. Shared Service Effects Delivery Multiple Services of Government Departments and Private Companies under one Roof ( One Stop Shop) Bring in More Transparency, efficiency, and accountability in Service Delivery Mechanism Offering Services Closer to the Citizens Home Delivering services through multiple e-Channels Helping Departments to focus on their core functions

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Live example and effect can be from Bangalore One. (Project launched in 2005).

Benefits to State Data Center made by Shared Service Model: Physical Security 24x7 monitoring of servers Support from SDC support team Data Security Firewall, IPS, Antivirus No procurement & maintenance cost of hardware and software, for the departments Vendor support, which ensures faster resolution of issues High Availability - Servers, Storage, Network Data convergence Centralization of departmental data Can be used as Disaster Recovery (DR) site

Shared Service enables efficient virtualization of servers (VMware and MS Hyper - V) to extract above benefits. If we talk about the servers, the process adds to parameters such as: server consolidation ratio, server utilization, restoration time, uptime and most important cost. References 1. http://egovreach.in/uploads/presentation/karnataka/shared_services.pdf 2. www.hicss.hawaii.edu/ 3. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/17506161011065226 4. http://ast.umich.edu/What-is-shared-services-102811.pdf 5. http://www.infosys.com/global-sourcing/white-papers/Documents/structured-approach-sharedservices.pdf 6. http://www.southeastiep.gov.uk/uploads/files/SECEExamplesofCostandBenefitsSharing.pdf 7. http://www.opm.gov/egov/documents/CBA/index.asp 61

Applications of Text Mining in E-governance

Prakash B R 1 *, Hanumanthappa M1, and Mallamma V Reddy1 ABSTRACT E-government is a modern way that government department provides services for the public. E-Governance provide real time intelligence by making the machine understand the information and takes intelligent decision by integrating heterogeneous data from distributed sources in more autonomous way. In this paper we discuss data mining technique in e-government construction and how text-mining techniques can help in retrieval of information. Cross- Language Information Retrieval (CLIR) is a subfield of Information Retrieval which provides a query in one language and searches document collections in one or many languages but it also has a specific meaning of cross language information retrieval where a document collection is multilingual. We also present, an integrated text mining based architecture for e-governance decision support using Cross Language information retrieval. Keywords: E-governance, DSS, Text Mining, Cross Language Information Retrieval, 1. Introduction Data Mining is concerned with finding patterns in data which are interesting and valid. Numerous data mining algorithms exist, including the predictive data mining algorithms, which result in classifiers that can be used for prediction and classification, and descriptive data mining algorithm that serve other purposes like finding of associations, clusters, etc. The area has recently gained much attention of industry, due to the existence of large collections of data in different formats, and the increasing need of data analysis and comprehension. Considering the fact that most data is stored as text, text mining has even higher potential [1]. Text mining is a relatively new interdisciplinary field that brings together concepts from statistics, machine learning, information retrieval, data mining, linguistics and natural language processing. It is said to be the discovery by computer of new, previously unknown information by automatically extracting information from different written resources [2]. Text mining is different from mere text search or web search where the objective is to discard irrelevant material to identify what the user is looking for. Decision Support (DS) [3] is concerned with developing systems aimed at helping decision makers solve problems and make decisions. Their main characteristics are that they incorporate both data and models; are designed to assist managers in semi-structured or unstructured decision-making processes; support, rather than replace, managerial judgment and are aimed at improving the effectiveness of decisions. Decision Support Systems (DSS) can be data or model oriented. We have entered an era where very large amount of politically oriented text are now available online. This includes both official documents, such as the full text of laws and the proceedings of legislative bodies, and unofficial documents, such as postings on weblogs (blogs) devoted to politics. Fortunately, there are many tools at our disposal to manage this outbreak of textual information, many of these tools are derived from earlier works in Information Retrieval (IR), Natural language processing, and statistics, Artificial intelligence (AI), Information Theory and Data Mining [4]. Social scientists often analyze textual data for indicators about the source, purpose, and consequences of communications. In media and
1

Bangalore University, India *Corresponding Author: (Email: brp.tmk@gmail.com, Telephone: +91- 9880348847)

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political analyses, for instance, texts are scrutinized for evidence of thematic trends and framing, or the packaging of information with the intent of creating a particular interpretation. Text mining, defined as knowledge discovery in textual databases [5], The greatest potential of applications of text mining is in the areas where large quantities of textual data is generated or collected in the course of transactions. For example industries like publishing, legal, healthcare and pharmaceutical research, and areas like customer complaints handling and marketing focus group programs would be the best areas of application of text mining. Innovative applications in the contexts of personalization in B2C e-commerce, competitive intelligence, customer satisfaction analysis and e-mail filtering are discussed in numerous articles. Not surprisingly, text mining has been successfully applied for the purpose of easing the tedium of content analysis and literature survey in research work [6]. Decision support systems (DSS) help leaders and managers make decisions in situations that are unique, rapidly changing, and not easily specified in advance. Text Mining based DSS integrate unstructured textual data with predictive analytics to provide an environment for arriving at well-informed citizen-centric decisions in the context of egovernance. The term text mining was coined to describe tools used to manage textual information. Text mining allows us to create a technology that combines a humans linguistic capabilities with the speed and accuracy of a computer. Text mining aims at employing technology to analyze more detailed information in the content of each document and to extract interesting information that can be provided only by multiple documents viewed as whole, such as trends and significant features that may be a trigger to useful actions and decision making. However, data mining is the analytical process designed to explore structured data in search of consistent patterns and /or systemic relationships between variables, and then to validate the findings by applying the detected patterns to new subsets of data. 2. Text mining based decision support: techniques and architecture for e-governance The technologies used in Text Mining include: information retrieval (IR), information extraction (IE), topic tracking, summarization, categorization, concept linkage, information visualization, and question answering. The most widely used text mining techniques [7] are discussed briefly below to enable better understanding of their application in the field of e-governance, citizen participation and e-democracy. Information extraction: Information extraction is the task of automatically extracting structured information from unstructured and/or semi-structured machine-readable documents. In most of the cases this activity concerns processing human language texts by means of natural language processing (NLP). Categorization: Text categorization is a necessity due to the very large amount of text documents that we have to deal with daily. Categorization involves identifying the main themes of a document by placing the document into a pre-defined set of topics. A text categorization system can be used in indexing documents to assist information retrieval tasks as well as in classifying e-mails, memos or web pages in a yahoo-like manner. Needless to say, automatic text categorization is essential. Categorization often relies on a thesaurus for which topics are predefined, and relationships are identified by looking for broader terms, narrower terms, synonyms, and related terms. Clustering: The objective of clustering is to partition an unstructured set of objects into clusters (groups). One often wants the objects to be as similar to objects in the same cluster and as dissimilar to objects from other clusters as possible. Clustering is an unsupervised learning method. The result (the clustering, the partition) is based solely on the object representation, the similarity measure and the clustering algorithm. Topic tracking: A topic tracking system works by keeping user profiles and, based on the documents the user views, predicts other documents of interest to the user. Some of the better text mining tools let users select particular categories of interest, and can even automatically infer the users interests based on his/her reading history and click-through information.

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Summarization: Text summarization is immensely helpful for trying to figure out whether or not a lengthy document meets the users needs and is worth reading for further information. The key to summarization is to reduce the length and detail of a document while retaining its main points and overall meaning. Question answering: Another application area of text mining is answering of question answering, which deals with how to find the best answer to a given question. Question answering can utilize more than one text mining techniques. Association detection: In Association Rules, the focus is on studying the relationships and implications among topics, or descriptive concepts, which are used to characterize a set of related text. The goal is discover important association rules within a corpus such that the presence of a set of topics in an article implies the presence of another topic.

Text mining techniques, though relatively new, are considered mature enough to be incorporated into almost all commercial data mining software packages. The features of some popular data mining software that have text mining modules are summarized in their paper. They have observed that text mining has made a transition from the domain of research to that of robust industrial strength technology, and can be used in mission critical applications like e-governance.

Figure. I. DSS for e-governance 3. Text mining applications in e-governance The transformation from conventional government services to E-government services heralds a new era in public services. E-government services can replace the governments traditional services with services of better quantity, quality and reach, and increase citizen satisfaction, using Information and Communication Technology (ICT). E-governance aims to make the interactions between government and citizens (G2C), government and business enterprise (G2B) and inter government department dealing (G2G) friendly, convenient transparent and less expensive [8]. 64

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A growing amount of informative text regarding government decisions, directives, rules and regulations are now distributed on the web using a variety of portals, so that citizens can browse and peruse them. This assumes, however, that the information seekers are capable of untangling the massive volume and complexity of the legally worded documents [9]. Government regulations are voluminous, heavily crossreferenced and often ambiguous. Government information is in unstructured / semi-structured form, the sources are multiple (government regulations comes from national, state and local governments) and the formats are different creating serious impediment to their searching, understanding and use by common citizens. In the G2G arena, the government departments are in an even greater need of a system that is able to provide information retrieval, data exchange, metadata homogeneity, and proper information dissemination across the administrative channels of national, regional / state, and local governments. The increasing demand for and complexity of government regulations on various aspects of economic social and political life, calls for advanced knowledge-based framework for information gathering, flow and distribution. For example, if policy makers intend to establish a new act, they need to know the acts related to the same topic that have been established before, and whether the content of the new act conflicts with or has already been included in existing acts. Also, regulations are frequently updated by government departments to reflect environmental changes and changes in policies. Tools that can detect ambiguity, inconsistency and contradiction are needed [10] because the regulations, amended provisions, legal precedence and interpretive guidelines together create a massive volume of semi-structured documents with potentially similar content but possible differences in format, terminology and context. Information infrastructures that can consolidate, compare and contrast different regulatory documents will greatly enhance and aid the understanding of existing regulations and promulgation of new ones. Government regulations should ideally be retrievable and understandable with ease by legal practitioners, policy makers as well as general public /citizens. Despite many attempts, it is recognized that egovernment services are yet to render the desired pro-citizen services and are mostly targeted towards internal efficiency. These public comments are opinion-oriented arguments about the regulations. The facility of identification and classification of main subject of the claims / opinions provided by the tool helps rule-writers preview and summarize the comments. 4. Road map for text mining based DSS in India E-Government can advance the agenda on Governance and fiscal reform, transparency, anticorruption, empowerment and poverty reduction .E-Governance in India has steadily evolved from computerization of Government Departments to initiatives that encapsulate the finer points of Governance, such as citizen centricity, service orientation and transparency. The plan envisages creation of right environments to implement Government to Government (G2G), Government to Business (G2B), Government to Employee (G2E), and Government to Citizen. Indian government should take the initiative to encourage citizens to send their feedback, complaints, and suggestions through e-portal and discuss various issues on government services in virtual discussion forums. The major challenges and bottlenecks for successful E-governance Implementation in India has been shown that lack of local language interface is a major detrimental effect for wider proliferation of EGovernance applications in India. For successful deployment of E-Governance applications in multilingual domain, various standardization aspects related to input mechanisms, storage and retrieval, and output and display mechanism need to be addressed in a national perspective. It is also necessary that open-standards to be in place and adopted for seamless access and interchange information and Moreover, various research aspects for futuristic tools such as Cross-Lingual Information Retrieval between Indian Languages and W3C compliant Indian Language Web-Browsers need to be initiated in an urgent basis. 4.1. Multilingual Text Mining (MLTM) Multilingual text processing is useful because the information content found in different languages is complementary, both regarding facts and opinions [11]. Documents written in different languages were 65

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first clustered and organized into hierarchies using the growing hierarchical self-organizing map model [12]. They have also noted that in the domain of multilingual text mining, little attention has to be paid for building multilingual document hierarchies and deriving associations from such hierarchies. Rowena Chau et al (2004), have discussed about the multilingual text mining approach to cross-lingual text retrieval (CLTR), and their multilingual text mining approach for automatically discovering the multilingual linguistic knowledge contributes to cross-lingual text retrieval by providing a more affordable alternative to the costly manually constructed linguistic resources. By exploiting a parallel corpus covering multiple languages, the automatic construction of language-independent concept space capturing all conceptual relationships among multilingual terms is accomplished [13]. 5. Kannada and Telugu Native Languages to English Cross Language Information Retrieval Cross Language Information Retrieval (CLIR) can be defined as the process of retrieving information present in a language different from the language of the users query. CLIR bridges the gap between information need (query) and the available content (documents). The World Wide Web (WWW), a rich source of information, is growing at an enormous rate with an estimate of more than 29.7 billion pages on the World Wide Web as of February 2007. According to a survey conducted by Netcraft[is an Internet services company], English is still the dominant language on the web. However, global internet usage statistics reveal that the number of non-English internet users is steadily on the rise. Making this huge repository of information on the web, which is available in English, accessible to non-English internet users worldwide has become an important challenge in, recent times [14]. The above problem is solved by Cross-Lingual Information Retrieval (CLIR) by allowing users to pose the query in a language (source language) which is different from the language (target language) of the documents that are searched. This enables users to express their information need in their native language while the CLIR system takes care of matching it appropriately with the relevant documents in the target language. To help in identification of relevant documents, each result in the final ranked list of documents is usually accompanied by an automatically generated short summary snippet in the source language. Later, the relevant documents could be completely translated into the source language.

Figure II: System Architecture of our CLIR System 66

Prakash B R et al. / Applications of Text Mining in E-governance

Kannada or Canarese is a language spoken in India predominantly in the state of Karnataka, Making it the 25th most spoken language in the world. It has given birth to so many Indian languages like, Tulu, Kodava etc and one of the scheduled languages of India and the official and administrative language of the state of Karnataka. Telugu is also one of the widely spoken languages in India especially in the state of Andhra Pradesh and the district of Yanam. Both Kannada and Telugu use the UTF-8 code and draw their vocabulary mainly from Sanskrit. 6. Conclusion In this paper we have discussed need of text mining based DSS for government agencies, various text mining applications developed in e-government, architecture for system development process and proposed an integrated framework that can be used by government organizations to develop text mining based DSS. We have also studied e-government objectives and the need for citizen centric systems for India and provided a road map for projects. India can start with bilingual text mining project at national level and extend the same as multi lingual text mining initiative and then replicate the system to states at a later stage. Reference 1. Jess Cardeosa, C. Gallardo, J. M. Moreno, Text Mining Techniques to Support e-Democracy Systems. CSREA EE 2009, 401-405. 2. S. Godbole, S. Roy, Text to Intelligence: Building and Deploying a Text Mining Solution in the Services Industry for Customer Satisfaction Analysis, IEEE, pp 441-448, 2008. 3. E.G. Mallach. Understanding Decision Support Systems and Expert Systems, Irwin, 1994. 4. E.G. Mallach.Decision Support and Data Warehouse Systems. McGraw-Hill, 2000. 5. M. Hanumanthappa, B R Prakash, Manish Kumar Applications of Data mining in eGovernance at 7th International Conference on E-Government (ICEG-2010) held at Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) during 22-24 April 2010. 6. D. Delen, M. D. Crossland, Seeding the survey and analysis of research literature with text mining, Expert Systems with Applications, pp 1707-1720, 2008. 7. G Koteswara Rao, Shubhamoy Dey, (2010). Evolution of Text Mining Techniques and Related Applications in E-governance and E-democracy. In Proceedings of the IEEE, ICCET, Jodhpur,INDIA. 8. Dr D.C.Misra (2009), An E-governance Vision for India by 2020 9. Fatudimu I.T, Musa A.G. Knowledge Discovery in Online Repositories: A Text Mining Approach. ISSN 1450 216X Vol.22 No.2 (2008), pp.241-250. 10. G. Koteswara Rao1 and Shubhamoy Dey 2 DECISION SUPPORT FOR E-GOVERNANCE: A TEXT MINING APPROACH International Journal of Managing Information Technology (IJMIT) Vol.3, No.3, August 2011 pp 73-91. 11. Hsin-Chang Yang, Chung-Hong Lee, and Ding-Wen Chen (2009) "A Method for Multilingual Text Mining and Retrieval Using Growing Hierarchical Self-Organizing Maps." Journal of Information Science, Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 2-23. (SSCI) 12. M. Hanumanthappa, B R Prakash, Manish Kumar Comprehensive Document Clustering for Information retrieval on web , Published in the IFRSAs International Journal Of Computing (IIJC) in IIJC Volume 1, Issue 3 in May-June 2011 "IIJC-2011-1-3-197". ISSN (Print):2231:2153, ISSN (Online):2230:9039 13. R. Chau and C.H. Yeh, A multilingual text mining approach to web cross-lingual text retrieval, Knowledge Based Systems 17(5/6) (2004) 21927. 14. Mallamma V Reddy, Dr. M. Hanumanthappa Kannada and Telugu Native Languages to English Cross Language Information Retrieval (IJCSIT) International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technologies, Vol. 2 (5) , 2011, 1876-1880 pp 1875-1880. 67

Uses of VoIP in E-governanace

Manish Mahant Manikpuri 1 * and Sapna Choudhary 2 ABSTRACT This document discusses a project which aimed of using a VoIP in e-Governance. The objective of the project is what are the advantages of using VoIP in e-Governance. State is reaping benefits of successful setting up of statewide area network (SWAN) and secretariat local area network (SecLAN) as a part of its e-governance project. One of benefits is the use of VoIP phones which have allowed free of cost phone connectivity among different government offices. Another benefit of using VoIP phones is the voice quality. The voice qualities of these phones are very good and do not face things like line congestion or faulty lines while using these phones. Improved communication could bring remote areas into the mainstream world economy. Keywords:VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), e-Governance, COST 1. Introduction of VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol is a general term for a family of methodologies, communication protocols, and transmission technologies for delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. 2. Architecture of VoIP Since the emergence of VoIP as a cheaper way of communicating over the internet, various infrastructures have been developed to increase both the efficiency and effectiveness of both the VoIP systems and the VoIP architecture. To successfully install and provide regular maintenance to both the VoIP systems and VoIP architecture is an expense that was treated as capital investment by the two business partners. The benefits were to be enjoyed in the long term. Figure 1 shows the architecture of VoIP.

RSSGI, India Corresponding Author: (Email: manishmhnt@gmail.com) 2 SRGI, India

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3. Introduction of e-Governance E-Government (short for electronic government, also known as e-gov, digital government, online government, or connected government) is creating a comfortable, transparent, and cheap interaction between government and citizens (G2C government to citizens), government and enterprise (G2B government to business enterprise) and relationship between governments (G2G inter-agency relationship). There are four domains of e-government namely, governance, information and communication technology, business process re engineering and e-citizen. E-governance should enable anyone visiting city website to communicate and interact with city employees via Internet with graphical user interface (GUI), instant-messaging, audio/video presentations, and in any way more sophisticated than a simple email letter to the address provided at the site. 4. Architecture of e-Governance

Figure 2 5. Reviewing Government Use of VoIP Government has actively pursued VoIP implementations for its cost savings features for many years. Central, State and local IT and telecom managers are actively exploring ways VoIP can be used to replace older, more expensive communications infrastructure. Today, VoIP is either being researched or deployed in government offices across the country. Government is a significant telephone services customer. Combined, Central, state and local government agencies annually spend billions of dollars on telephone services. One of the benefits is the use of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phones which have allowed free of cost phone connectivity among different government offices. As these phones use Internet for connectivity between different offices, the government does not have to pay any bills to service providers for using them.

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After closer study, it becomes apparent that government savings from VoIP have significant potential. Much of the regulatory debate about VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol; also referred to as Internet Telephony) is focused on the question of whether the nascent technology should fall under regulatory guidelines that have allowed local, state and central government to levy taxes on traditional phone services for many years. VoIP detractors argue that the similarities between Voice over Internet and voice over phone lines mean that both technologies should be taxed the same. Conversely, VoIP proponents argue that voice over Internet is an application, much like MP3s, e-mail, instant messaging, etc., thus should not be treated differently. The back and forth discussion over lost taxes has made VoIP taxation a hotly debated issue in Parliament, the courtroom and within every regulatory body governing telephone service in INDIA. VoIP and VoIP implementation can be define in many ways. For example, VoIP can be internal connections within a single office building or VoIP can be external connections, connecting offices on a campus or across the country. At the customer level, VoIP is commonly referred to as applications that move voice across the Internet with/without a phone number to other parties on the Internet. Services such as Skype and Kazaa provide free connections to users that wish to send voice directly to parties linked with the respective software, across the Internet. VoIP doesnt necessarily have to mean voice over the Internet. VoIP is commonly described as Internet Protocol or IP communications. Specifically, voice is converted into IP for many applications. Because technology enables voice conversion into IP protocol, with an IP network, voice can move office to office without the Internet. VoIP does not necessarily refer to calls moving across the public Internet. Rather, VoIP often refers to voice being converted into an IP format, and then pushed across local area, wide area, private or public networks. VoIP handset could be receiving Internet Protocol (IP) voice from a private network, analog voice converted to IP, or IP voice from the public internet. Or, in easy way you can say that VoIP converts the voice signal from your telephone into a digital signal that travels over the internet then converts it back at the other end so you can speak to anyone with a regular phone number. 6. Advantages of Using VoIP in e-Governance Everybody is talking about VoIP being the wave of the future in telecommunications, but what are its advantages? There are so many advantages of VoIP, we will address some of the major advantages in this section:- The most important advantage is that of the cost savings. VoIP provides a significant cost savings over telephone service from the traditional providers. This is particularly true in the area of long distances rates; with many VoIP service providers offerings plans with unlimited long distance calling at a low monthly flat rate. - Voice Quality, or Quality of Service, refers to the clarity of your phone call over a business or domestic network. Under normal circumstances, when using broadband connections, the quality of a conversation using VoIP will be indistinguishable from conventional telephone service. Performance is very high as compared to traditional phone. - VoIP usage would substantially increase with government policy to encourage and support VoIP deployment. Incentives to entrepreneurs, VoIP providers, etc would increase the sale of equipment in the private sector and accompanying sales taxes. VoIP is component of broadband. Thus, it could also be expected that software and hardware sales associated with increased broadband deployment would also benefit government. - VoIP can be very useful in e-education. As VoIP, can send real time audio through the computer via use of headphones and speakers without V-SAT. 70

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Because VoIP runs through the Internet, you can even use it to have videoconferences without the headache or expenses of buying and setting up a videophone. This VoIP videoconferencing can be used in e-courts.

7. Sample Case Study City of Southfield, Michigan Project Coordinator Staff Original system Post VoIP configuration Capital cost for System Change in telephone bill Savings from VoIP

: Gerald Werner : 830 employees : 1050 Centrex Lines : subscribe to just 100 Centre lines : $600,000 : declined to $150,000 from $338,000 : 49%

Eau Claire School District, Wisconsin Project Coordinator : Don Johnson Staff : 1300 employees Original system : 225Centrexlines Post VoIP configuration : 75 Centrex lines Total cost for system : $1,000,000 Annual phone bill : went from $176,000 to $76,000 Savings from VoIP : 57%

8. Overview of the Government Telephone Bill As, you can see from the above case study VoIP has a direct impact on telephone bills because it decreases traditional telephone usage. Before VoIP implementation; moving, adding, or changing an extension incurred a cost of roughly $100 approx. VoIP has virtually eliminated this expenses altogether. Thus, to approximate the potential savings from VoIP, it would be best to start with combined total telephone bill for local, state, and central government. Interoffice calling charges are eliminated via business VoIP. 9. Conclusion It can be expected that VoIP deployment in local, state and central government will continue to increase; the next step would be to forecast how much money government will save annually with VoIP deployment. References 1. VoIPs second acts, VoIP News http://www.voip-news.com/art/3p.html 2. http://www.gcn.com/research_results/avvid.html 3. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0.1759.1644594.asp 4. http://www.vonmag.com/issue/2004/lulaug/features/government_voip.html 5. http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20040722S0005 6. http://www.adti.net/telecom/get.voip.html 7. http://www.findarticals.com/p/newsarticals/timesofindiathe/mi_8012/is_20090303/voip phonessavegovt money/ai_n39546726/8. FCC.gov, what are some advantages of VoIP. 9. VOIP: an end to international tariffs? Telecommunications online. Retrieved 2009-01-21. 10. Carriers look to IP for backhaul. Telecommunication online. January 21, 2009.

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Education Technology in Digital Age - A study on Classroom learning for future

DM Arvind Mallik 1 * ABSTRACT The focus of all of this intense interchange was the shape and future of learning institutions. Our charge was to accept the challenge of an Information Age and acknowledge, at the conceptual as well as at the methodological level, the responsibilities of learning at an epistemic moment when learning itself is the most dramatic medium of that change. This is an idealistic claim about the primacy of learning that the single most important characteristic of the Future of classroom learning in a Digital Age is its capacity to allow for a worldwide community and its endlessly myriad subsets to exchange ideas, to learn from one another in a way not previously available. We contend that the future of learning institutions demands a deep, epistemological appreciation of the profundity of what the Internet offers humanity as a model of a learning institution. Keywords:Internet, Digital World, Classroom, Technology 1. Introduction - Current Scenario of Our Education System I am often told that I rush ahead to promote things that will only be possible 30 or 40 years from now. But that is not the case, because I commend that which is current and urgent, which already exists in more advanced countries, while my detractors are unaware of such things because unknowingly they are 30 or 50 years behind the times. - Bernardo A. Houssay (Nobel Prize for Medicine, 1947) Will classrooms still exist 20 years from now? Do we have traditional classrooms in a physical sense anymore? What is the classroom anyway? For most of us, a classroom consists of four walls, closed doors, chairs, tables, perhaps a blackboard, and sometimes a desk - simple but efficient pieces of furniture. A quick glance at the history of pedagogical practices reveals that the classroom has scarcely evolved over a period of many years. Is the traditional classroom intrinsically outdated or has it rather survived the test of time because it is already self-reconfigurable and has been adapted in many different contexts of use? Do we even need a classroom anymore? Do we need a teacher in the classroom? What do we teach and what do we want pupils to learn? What kinds of knowledge and skills will be required in the future? These are some of the questions that we should bear in mind when thinking about the classroom of the future Now days it is a global trend that young brains are being attracted more towards technological education. There is no doubt that science and technology are complementary in nature and have to grow hand in hand. Besides, the growth of knowledge, research in fundamental science always adds an inevitable input to the advancement of technology. Quick and highly paid job opportunities have always been an added advantage for the technology graduates. Further, they are not encouraged to have crazy ideas. The current system of teaching and evaluation does not provide any opportunity for this purpose. Starting from the primary to the higher education, the present emphasis is on maximization of the quantity of information instead of leaving room for imagination or recreation of minds. We forget that the creative mind always has no problem in acquiring information on its own.
1

PESITM, India *Corresponding Author: (Email: aravind.mallik@gmail.com, Telephone: +91- 9886300070)

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2. Digital Presence and Digital Futures Digital technologies increasingly enable and encourage social networking and interactive, collaborative engagements, including those implicating and impacting learning. And yet traditional learning institutions, whether K12 or institutions of higher learning, continue to privilege individualized performance in assessments and reward structures. Born and matured out of a century and a half of institutional shaping, maturing, and hardening, these assessment and reward structures have become fixed in place. But they now serve also to weigh down and impede new learning possibilities. Digital technologies have dramatically encouraged self-learning. Web interfaces have made for less hierarchical and more horizontal modes of access. The Web has also facilitated the proliferation of information, from the inane and banal to the esoteric and profound, from the patently false, misleading.

3. New Type of Teacher and Student Teachers taking part in remote education must fulfill various essential pre-requisites. They will have to be fully familiar with all distance education technology. Teachers should be trained in the use of new technologies. This training will be continuous given the constantly changing demands of distance education and the new opportunities offered by the rapid renewal of technologies. Their homes and workplaces should be well equipped. Quality education requires teachers homes to be supplied with standard computer and communications equipment. This equipment must be updated periodically. New digital habits must be acquired. The process of transition from a predominantly analog classroom academic world to a digital and virtual world is slow. Teachers should eliminate printed information wherever possible, replacing paper by bits. 4. New Digital Culture In practice this road towards greater unity in human society requires a change in culture, beginning with a profound change in daily working habits. This is turn supposes special training which is not easy but is worth the effort as the advantages are obvious. In the first place there is a leveling of leisure and study time. The stress of change will be reduced.Initially, hybrid situations will exist, such as the coexistence of printed and digital texts, as when an architect displays a design on paper that has been generated by computer, and which could be consulted directly on the screen. With time it is possible to acquire the habit of communicating without paper. Even fax paper turns out to be obsolete in the face of the modem/fax that enables messages to be sent and received directly from computers. Once the network between students and professors has been established, progress is made at a different pace. 5. Technology in Todays Classrooms Do you remember lugging your books to and from school every day? How about stuffing them in your locker while trying to keep track of your calculator, pens, and pencils? For future students and even some current ones, these common school quandaries may never be a problem again. Computers and advancing technology are changing the way classrooms work and providing students new ways to learn. Laptops, ipod, mobile phone, iphone, are gadgets that are taking the place of textbooks and libraries. The internet connectivity has brought in a revolution in the minds of even babies. Education has taken a significant overhauling with technological advances being widely used in effective teaching and mentoring. Teachers have had to undergo a sea change in updating their online skills so as to reach their students.Online social networking sites such as Orkut, Facebook keep students engaged for hours. Or it is games online. So, it is only imperative that we use online tools and gadgets to teach and get them interested in aiming for higher grades. Visual learning is extremely effective in learning. And so, we have PowerPoint presentations made by teachers and also students being asked to create one to be graded later. Animated videos are made and shared to explain a concept in math or physics. Languages are learnt using VOIP such as Skype, Google 73

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Talk. Google Docs, wikis, blogs are tools being increasingly used on collaborative classroom/online projects. Podcasts of classroom notes are downloaded to listen as students commute. Universities are making these podcasts available to their students. Online learning is where the tutor and student/students in different parts of the globe come together for a virtual class at an appointed time. In real time, they share an interactive whiteboard, where pictures, animated videos, PowerPoint presentations can be shared for effective and engaging teaching. Audio and video is possible along with a chat board in the sidebar. Teaching languages or any subject under the sun is a breeze with this free platform. They learn to type at an early age and get the specialized treatment they need through computer software. Technology making positive changes in todays classroom. The emergence of digital textbooks still is on the horizon, while Web 2.0 technology has made unexpected progress in improving the way students and teachers collaborate. 6. Great Technologies That Have Changed the Digital Classroom In the past, the suggestion of getting a college degree without ever cracking a book meant paying a degree mill. It meant the degree was in name only, reflecting neither learning nor effort. Then distance learning meant correspondence courses, perhaps combined with some coordinated telecasts. Technology has already changed all that, and the future will change it even further. - eTexts Now online college students can obtain legitimate college degrees without cracking a book but that doesnt mean they dont have to read. Even with hard copy texts available, most students download their textbooks in password protected Portable Document Format (PDF). Not only is this a green alternative, but you avoid the weight of having to carry around textbooks.Students can copy the PDF to mobile devices, and carry all of their texts on one iPad or Galaxy Tab. They choose to print whole books, only parts, or just use the digital document. A drawback to depending on protected PDFs is that they only open with active internet connections but once opened students can use them until closed. - Virtual Libraries Most online school programs even those which still use correspondence course designs have robust virtual libraries something that never existed 15 years ago. Many colleges and universities contract with EBSCO Publishing to maximize available peer reviewed journals. Even traditional students use in college libraries.Distance learners access the same journals as campus students from anywhere in the world. Students quickly build up their own virtual libraries of thousands of journal articles, just as mobile as any e-text. Renaming these files as closely as possible to the required bibliographic format, and cataloguing them, keeps them organized, accessible, and easy to cite in papers. - Online School Portals Until here resources for modern distance learning seem only different in form from correspondence courses. That changes with portals. These virtual campuses come complete with individual rooms for each class. They are so significant an innovation that they could change the future of on campus studies. Anticipating how ubiquitous technology should become, some schools already require even on campus students to take at least one class online. This innovation means students need not all be present at once. More, many schools are now integrating social media into their portals so students can correspond about classes and socially connect for pleasure. - Webcams & Teleconferencing With the advance of higher bandwidth, real time webcasts have become a reality for online courses. Some schools still set most of their distance learning around attending formal classes, and allow this method as a supplement. Other colleges choose to use up such heavy bandwidth only for specific lessons, allowing 74

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students and teachers to get to know each other better.Lectures that do not change need not have all the students watch at once, so schools now make them available to download as needed. Downloading is quickly replacing mailed audio and video recordings as a preferred media delivery method. Webcams and teleconferencing have added a new element of interactivity to the virtual classroom that cannot be matched. - Mobile Apps & Augmented Reality Mobile apps may present the biggest challenges for colleges with growing online programs. Augmented Reality (AR) apps interest schools. This cutting-edge technology is so young that its full potential still requires exploration. AR allows students to point mobile device cams at objects around them. The screen image offers information about what they see. Schools might use them for mobile testing, for example asking questions about objects on museum visits or historic tours. They could allow astronomy students to point a device at the night sky for the screen to identify stars, or outline constellations. Common availability of such apps may still be out of reach. 7. Podcasts and Digital Games Podcasting is a relatively new invention that allows anybody to publish files to the Internet where individuals can subscribe and receive new files from people by a subscription. The primary benefit of podcasting for educators is quite simple. It enables teachers to reach students through a medium that is both "cool" and a part of their daily lives. The field of educational games and serious games has been growing significantly over the last few years. The digital games are being provided as tools for the classroom and have a lot of positive feedback including higher motivation for students. 8. Effects of Technology on Classrooms and Students Saving money is definitely not a reason to care about digitally enhanced education, Dr. Haskell said. Technology is not a cost-cutting way to provide education at any level . . . Its not a way to do quality education on the cheap, and its not even a way to do poor education on the cheap. Digitally enhanced education does help students in at least two ways. First, it enriches education across the board by engaging them in what theyre learning. Engaged students learn best, and digital technology is a path to engagement. Digitally enhanced education also helps students succeed. In this sense, digitally enhanced education is not only the means to an end, but, in the long term, and end in itself - Change in Student and Teacher Roles When students are using technology as a tool or a support for communicating with others, they are in an active role rather than the passive role of recipient of information transmitted by a teacher, textbook, or broadcast. The student is actively making choices about how to generate, obtain, manipulate, or display information. Technology use allows many more students to be actively thinking about information, making choices, and executing skills than is typical in teacher-led lessons. Moreover, when technology is used as a tool to support students in performing authentic tasks, the students are in the position of defining their goals, making design decisions, and evaluating their progress. The teacher's role changes as well. The teacher is no longer the center of attention as the dispenser of information, but rather plays the role of facilitator, setting project goals and providing guidelines and resources, moving from student to student or group to group, providing suggestions and support for student activity. - Increased Motivation and Self Esteem The most common--and in fact, nearly universal--teacher-reported effect on students was an increase in motivation. Teachers and students are sometimes surprised at the level of technology-based 75

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accomplishment displayed by students who have shown much less initiative or facility with more conventional academic tasks.Teachers talked about motivation from a number of different perspectives. Some mentioned motivation with respect to working in a specific subject area, for example, a greater willingness to write or to work on computational skills. Others spoke in terms of more general motivational effects--student satisfaction with the immediate feedback provided by the computer and the sense of accomplishment and power gained in working with technology - Technical Skills Students, even at the elementary school level, are able to acquire an impressive level of skill with a broad range of computer software. Although the specific software tools in use will likely change before these students enter the world of work, the students acquire a basic understanding of how various classes of computer tools behave and a confidence about being able to learn to use new tools that will support their learning of new software applications. - Accomplishment of More Complex Tasks Teachers for the observed classes and activities at the case study sites were nearly unanimous also in reporting that students were able to handle more complex assignments and do more with higher-order skills because of the supports and capabilities provided by technology. - More Collaboration with Peers Another effect of technology cited by a great majority of teachers is an increased inclination on the part of students to work cooperatively and to provide peer tutoring. While many of the classrooms we observed assigned technology-based projects to small groups of students, as discussed above, there was also considerable tutoring going on around the use of technology itself. Collaboration is fostered for obvious reasons when students are assigned to work in pairs or small groups for work at a limited number of computers. But even when each student has a computer, teachers note an increased frequency of students helping each other. - Increased Use of Outside Resources Teachers from 10 out of 17 classrooms observed at length cited increased use of outside resources as a benefit of using technology. This effect was most obvious in classrooms that had incorporated telecommunications activities but other classes used technologies such as satellite broadcasts, telefacsimiles, and the telephone to help bring in outside resources. - Improved Design Skills/Attention to Audience Experiences in developing the kinds of rich, multimedia products that can be produced with technology, particularly when the design is done collaboratively so that students experience their peers' reactions to their presentations, appear to support a greater awareness of audience needs and perspectives. Multiple media give students choices about how best to convey a given idea 9. Inevitable Changed coming to a Classroom near You Its hard to read the tea leaves of education technology. You never really know what the classroom of the upcoming year will look like in terms of technology. Will iPads be all the rage? Will videoconferencing replace face-to-face office hours? Would a smartphone app be the new way to turn in homework? Who knows? Thats when I tried a new way to figure out whats coming down the pipeline of edtech: I took a hard look at what the big edtech companies are doing today to change the classroom of tomorrow. This all started when I was chatting with a few folks from who explained how theyre growing into an academic hub rather than just the textbook renting service that got them started. But overall, its not a secret that you can 76

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predict the future of education technology by analyzing what tech companies are doing right now. So heres my 3 biggest predictions for whats coming to a classroom near you, based on how companies are acting right now: - The Move From Print To Digital Theres a change happening right now. Everyones talking about it. But not everyone is on board. Such is the usual manner in which change occurs. In my opinion, it started before the introduction of the iPad. It started in September 2007 with the initial release of the ePub format. This open and free e-book standard really woke up even the sleepiest of academic institutions. After about a year, many schools had at least experimented with the ePub format and were looking for ways to implement it.Then came the tablet wars. Its well known that the ePub format does not completely mesh with the iPad. Or at least its not what caused Apple to develop the tablet in the first place. But the iPad has played a key role in ePub whether Apple likes it or not. The iPad shined a light on the digital print format like never before. And its never been the same since. Companies have sprouted up to support digital publishing, ePub conversion, and an array of other solutions.So what does ePub and the iPad mean for education in the coming years? It means students will soon expect their books to be delivered in under a minute, not a few days via FedEx. It means teachers will be able to write their own textbooks with relative ease. It means the role of technology will continue to soar as adoption of digital publishing continues in tandem. In short, it means everything to the world of education. - Private Social Networks Facebook is ginormous. Its unwieldy and there are more and more rumblings about the things theyre doing to monetize. I cant say I blame Facebook for going public, but I dont plan on being surprised when they spend more time on advertising / monetizing new features than on customer satisfaction. So whats a school to do? Embrace the new Facebook for Schools perhaps? Start their own social network? If you take a look at what companies like Path are doing, its becoming quite apparent that the future of social networking will be smaller, more intimate, and less overwhelming. Companies like Edmodo are paving the way for this right now as they provide social networks for individual classrooms. This environment is more conducive to one-on-one learning, tutoring, and help in a controlled, safe environment. More importantly, knowing that the company providing the social network isnt merely interested in extracting as much money from you as possible is a big win in my book. - Cheaper Everything The education technology market is becoming white-hot and extremely competitive. When companies try to outdo each other, classrooms win. From the cost of buying textbooks, purchasing school supplies, and new-found love of technology, its clear that companies are starting to set their sites on the education vertical. So whether you like it or not, companies are a big part of education and technology. In fact, theyre a great way to figure out whats coming down the pipeline in terms of products, technology advancements, and the future of learning. 10. Benefit and Danger of Education Technology in Classroom The rapid changes in technology over the last 75 years have created enormous opportunities for education. While some technologies such as the computer were adopted early on, a reluctance to embrace change coupled with a lack of funding has resulted in a continuing dependence on chalkboards and other anachronistic technologies. The extent to which schools adopt new technologies, not surprisingly, often depends on how well theyre funded.

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- Preparing For The Workforce One of the most positive results of schools embracing new technologies is found when low-income students gain skills they otherwise wouldnt. The ability to type, use email and execute basic computer functions like Word and Excel are imperative in todays workforce. When students who have no access to computers at home learn these skills specifically because of technology in the classroom, they have a far greater chance of moving from have-nots to haves in the future. Having technological competence gives them a better chance of success in the workforce and gives them a greater ability and confidence to pursue online education university options. - No Student Left Behind When classrooms adopt iPads or other tablets in lower grades amongst younger students, the possibility that those students will be left behind in terms of the greater society decreases dramatically. Studies have consistently shown that new technology introduction to younger children provides better results than when introduced at a later age. Even if low-income students have no access to computers at home, the integration of new technology into all aspects of school life ensures that they have greater opportunities going forward. - Handwriting Requirements There are some arguably negative implications to the adoption of new technologies as well. Some of the most evident for the short term involve dropping long-standing handwriting requirements. Penmanship was dropped from most English classes over the last twenty years and cursive writing requirements are quickly being cut from many programs as well. Depending on ones perspective, not learning cursive in elementary school may not be the end of the world academically speaking. But advocates of teaching cursive argue that losing cursive is just one more case of technology eroding academic rigor. - Quality of Writing There is another, lesser known, but reasonable argument against adopting computers across all academic disciplines. Pen and paper often tend to be more conducive to good writing than computer keyboarding. Longhand writing is more likely to result in well-reasoned, nuanced and intricate prose. This may arise from the fact that typing lends itself more easily to abrupt and punchy prose. The staccato quality of typing can work its way into writing. Stylistic arguments aside; a potentially far more worrisome implication for the long term is the increasing technology gap among schools. - Social Class When the only technology requirements for completing a primary education involved paper, pencils, a slide rule and eventually calculators, the impact technology had in widening the divide between haves and have-nots was minimal. But the technology gap which exists in schools today also functions as a solidifier of social class. If low-income students are unlucky enough to attend schools which cant fund technology purchases, the chance that theyll find a way out of a low income life becomes less likely. - The Danger of Making Technology So Critical The ability to use technologies such as laptops and tablet computers allows students to acquire the same sets of core competencies theyll need in the workforce. Not acquiring these skill sets is more than an inconvenience. The ability to access information and basic computer literacy can function as a potential stepping-stone out of poverty for many students. If a student graduates high school without at least a rudimentary and working knowledge of new technologies, their future starts looking a lot less bright.And since many school/colleges which cant afford to incorporate technology into the classroom are largely found in less affluent areas, the likelihood of upward social mobility decreases significantly and social classes begin to look a lot more like social castes. The technology gap runs the risk of further cementing social class. This country has always celebrated the ability of 78

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- Technologys Impact on the Future Twenty years ago, someone without computer skills could still expect to find a decent job which, though not providing a huge income, could still support a family. But now, jobs that used to be considered basic blue collar jobs require technological know-how. A car mechanic used to need mechanical aptitude and a good set of wrenches and they were in business. Working in customer service used to require basic telephone skills. But increasingly, even menial entry level jobs require much more computer literacy than what some disadvantaged students are getting in schools. - Technology as a replacement for pen and paper is neutral:It has some minor advantages and disadvantages but is essentially just replacing one tool with another. By this I mean using an office suite to do work instead of an exercise book. It is becoming increasingly popular as computer equipment is becoming more and more accessible (especially with the netbook phenomenon, for example in NSW in Australia public schools have embraced netbooks to great effect). Two disadvantages are the increased possibility for distractions and also the increased possibility for copying others work. Both of these can be overcome with correct management of students and design of class workflow however. Advantages are that it is easier to make changes to work and so exploring different ideas and experimenting becomes easier. 11. Conclusion Chalk, blackboards and textbooks are still essential components for educating students today, but there is no question that in order to engage young people who are growing up with technology in a cyber-world, we must incorporate a greater level of technology into our schools. By introducing students to these resources and teaching them effective and appropriate use as digital education does not discriminate, but schools cannot create a digital habit if teachers do not manage to incorporate information technology and communications into their daily lives. As long as it is received in bits, the receiver decides how the message will be processed. For this reason digital education is a style for transmitting knowledge that has been freed from means of communication that obliged us to suffer the limitations corresponding to each medium, forcing us into the often brutal competition between them. A better-educated world will be fairer and more caring world. Having arrived at this point we will attempt to summarize the central concepts of digital education and reach a few conclusions. However, many people are unaware of this elementary fact and persist in their old habits. To make these changes, teachers and school leaders should participate in extensive professional development on how to best harness the power of technology to increase student achievement and ensure students are ready for college and the high-tech global job market References 1. Educational Technology Innovation and Impact. Available at :en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Educational_Technology_Innovation(accessed 12/07/2012) 2. Virtual Education. Available at :en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_education(accessed on 24/8/2012) 3. Six Challenges for Educational Technology .Available at:www.virtual.gmu.edu/pdf/ascd(accessed on 06/10/2012) 4. 5-new-technologies-that-have-changed-the-digital-classroom.Available at:http://edudemic.com/2012/09/5-new-technologies-that-have-changed-the-digital-classroom/ (accessed on 11/10/2012) 5. changes-in-classroom .Available at : http://edudemic.com/2012/07/changes-inclassroom(accessed on 21/10/2012) 6. Future+of+Classroom+Learning+in+a+Digital+Age.Available at : http://edudemic.com/page/Future+of+Classroom+Learning+in+a+Digital+Age (accessed on 24/10/2012) 79

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7. Today-s-Classroom-is-the-Result-of-Changing-Technology.Available at: http://www.novadesk.com/blog/bid/32290/Today-s-Classroom-is-the-Result-of-ChangingTechnology(accessed on 26/11/2012) 8. Antonio M. Battro and Percival J. Denham, , Digital Education (May, 1997), Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, 9. Vivendi Prospective Institute for the Future, The Future of Global E-Education, (September 7, 2001) 10. Mark Warschauer, University of California, The paradoxical future of digital learning, Berkeley Place, Irvine, CA, (13 March 2007) 11. The future of higher education: How technology will shape learning, The Economist Intelligence Unit 2008 12. Albright, J., Purohit, K. D., & Walsh, C. H. (in press). Hybridity, globalization and literacy education in the context of NYCs Chinatown. Pedagogies. 13. http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlstandards/standards.pdf( accessed on 29/11/2012) 14. Anderson, R. E., & Ronnkvist, A. (1999). The presence of computers in American schools. Teaching, Learning, and Computing: 1998 Survey Report. Irvine, CA: Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations. 15. Attewell, P., & Battle, J. (1999). Home computers and school performance. The Information Society, 15(1), 110. 16. Alexander, C., Ishikawa, S. & Silverstein, M. (1977). A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, and Construction.New York: Oxford University Press. 17. Crichton, S. (1993). Using Expertise Practice to Encourage Online Social Interaction. Unpublished masters thesis. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada 18. Crichton, S. (1998). Learning Environments Online: A Case Study of Actual Practice. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

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Identification of Critical Infrastructure Sectors of India and their Interdependency

Abhishek Narain Singh 1 *, M P Gupta1 and Amitabh Ojha 2 ABSTRACT This paper attempts to identify the Critical Infrastructure (CI) sectors of a country (India in specific) and finds the interdependencies among them. Since our day to day life is very much dependent on these infrastructures, it has become a necessity for governments and businesses around the world to prioritize and protect such systems. In this paper, we have used experts opinion and judgements to identify the CI sectors in India. Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) technique is used to examine the relationships and interdependencies among these identified sectors. Further, with the help of MICMAC analysis, these sectors have been categorized into four sub-groups on the basis of their driving power and dependence on other sectors. Since some of these CI sectors are highly dependent on one another, it becomes pivotal to identify the interdependency issues to effectively manage the resources and protect such CIs against cyber threats and vulnerabilities. Finally, based on the findings, suitable recommendations have been given to the government and business as well. Keywords: Critical Infrastructure, Cyber Security, Interdependency, Interpretive Structural Modelling, India 1. Introduction In todays scenario, one of the most serious concerns for the governments around the globe is the protection of their Critical Infrastructures (CIs). Power, transport, banking, telecommunication, IT/ ICT, etc. are the few sectors that are deeply involved in the day-to-day operations of everyone. That is what makes these sectors part of CI, because our daily life is now very much dependent on them directly or indirectly. Protecting such CIs against physical and/ or cyber-attacks have become a major challenge. As said by Richard George, the Technical Director of National Security Agency- Maryland, ...there will never be another war in which the critical infrastructure is not both, a cyber and physical target [1]. Protection of these infrastructure resources is not the responsibility of government only, neither the government alone can safeguard them. Since most of the infrastructure assets are now owned and managed by private sector, government and private both have to operate in close coordination to reach this aim. Table 1 presents some definitions of CI as described by various countries and researchers around the world. This paper examines various issues related to the protection of CIs of a country. Such as, identifying the sectors of critical importance and finding the interdependencies among them. In modern days, all the services of critical need/ importance are so connected and interdependent on one-another that shutting down of one such component can badly affect the functioning of others. Imagine a situation where power supply of a region goes down because of any natural hazard or sabotaging the electric power stations and the backup supply is also interrupted. In such case, all the telecommunication, banking, manufacturing, house-hold and various other services will get disturbed. And thus cause many social and economic fallbacks for the society/ region. The past decade has witnessed many of these kinds of events such as, the
1

Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India *Corresponding Author: (Email: singhabhi444@gmail.com@gmail.com,) 2 Research Design and Standards Organization (RDSO), Lucknow, India

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case of Hurricane Katrina in Plaquemines Parish in August 2005. Most of the CI of the city started failing as the streets were filled of floodwater, and slowly the city became paralyzed. Next section of the paper talks about some of the previous works done in this area and Indias preparedness towards securing its CIs and cyber space as well. Section 3 describes the Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) methodology used to analyse the interdependencies among identified CI sectors. Following this, next section develops some insights based on the findings of MICMAC (Matrice d'Impacts Croiss Multiplication Appliqus un Classement) analysis. Section 5 discusses the relationships and interdependencies among different CI sectors and their policy implications for India. Last section of the paper draws recommendations for government and businesses as well.

2. Literature Review The matter of securing CIs of a country is not simple as it seems, because the functioning of these sectors is multifaceted and highly interdependent on each other. The issue of interdependency makes them more complex and vulnerable as well. According to Setola et al. [6], these mutual dependencies are often hidden and are not very well recognized by the infrastructure operators as well. In his research, Little [7] has shown the interdependency of electric power, water, oil, transportation, natural gas and telecommunication sectors via directional graphs and their causes along-with. Researchers have also designed various interactive visualization tools to analyze the interdependencies among such CIs [8, 9]. Researchers and authors have also done separate studies to understand issues and complexities of various infrastructure sectors [table 2] across the globe. Cascading effects of these CIs were presented by Rahman in his work in 2005. He has developed a model for depicting the interdependency among CIs and their cascading effect [29]. A Common Body of Knowledge (CBK) was developed by Theoharidou et al. [30] for information security and critical information and communication infrastructure protection. Researchers [31] from Mississippi State University, Mississippi, USA have developed a control system testbed to discover various cyber related vulnerabilities for CIs, their implications on physical control systems, and the corresponding mitigations techniques.

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Different attacks on these CIs have their own cause and motives altogether. Gandhi et al. [32] have divided the motives behind such attacks in to three broad categories: Political, Socio-cultural, and Economical. Gaining political influence and power within country or outside is a major cause behind politically motivated cyber-attacks. Whereas, religious believe and extremism are some examples for socio-culturally motivated cyber/ physical attacks. A large variety of such attacks are economically motivated, basically to gain competitive advantage over businesses and/ or governments. FBI has identified various categories of threat agents for the CIs. This category includes criminal groups, foreign intelligence services, hackers, hacktivists, information warfare, insider threat and virus writers [33]. During our literature review, we have referred well recognized and peer reviewed international journals to explore and identify the key areas of CI security and the issues of interdependency among them. Other than these research journals, various published materials (e.g. government documents, industry reports, magazines, etc.) related to the subject was also consulted. This helped us to understand and analyze the concerns of various nations around the globe on the issues of protecting their cyber space and safeguarding CIs. Table 2: Sectoral studies on CI protection Issues Financial sector in US and its interdependency with other sectors Railway network infrastructure in US Liquid pipelines in US Managing risk responses for petroleum industry in Norway Electric grid infrastructure protection in US Impacts of climate change on European power sector Power grid and electrical sectors Interdependency between electrical and information infrastructure SCADA systems security against malware attacks Telecommunication infrastructure in Brazil Industrial communication networks SCADA security in Dutch drinking water sector IP based next generation emergency services architectures SCADA security in Dutch drinking water sector IP based next generation emergency services architectures IP multimedia system for emergency calling/ reporting Interdependency issue in social network environment Integrity and Denial-of-Service attacks on control systems

Sectors Banking & Finance Transport Energy

References [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16, 17, 18] [19] [20, 21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28]

IT/ ICT

Water Supply Emergency Services Water Supply Emergency Services

Defence Industrial Base Chemical Reactor

2.1 Indias Preparedness towards Securing Cyberspace The rapid growth of IT/ ICT and BPO sectors in India have posed new and fast changing cyber threats and challenges for government and businesses. The sophisticated use of IT/ ICT in 26/11 Mumbai attacks is an example of such changing threat scenario. Data released by National Crime Records Bureau 83

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(NCRB) shows an increase of 128 percent in registered cyber-crime cases in India in the year 2010. 966 cyber-crime cases were registered under IT Act across India in 2010 against 420 cases in 2009 [34]. The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has reported and tracked 219 government websites defaced by various hacker groups by month of October in the year 2011 [34]. As a first step towards IT security in India, Ministry of Law, Justice and Company Affairs, Govt. of India passed the IT Act in June 2000, an amendment of which was later published in February 2009 in the name of IT (Amendment) Act, 2008. This Act provides a legal framework to control cyber-crime cases in India. Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) Directorate (an attached office of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Govt. of India) has issued guidelines for Indian government organizations in August 2007 that recommends eleven steps to implement a complete information security management program with ISO 27001 certification. On similar lines, National Informatics Centre (NIC), a body of Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Govt. of India has released comprehensive guidelines for Indian government websites in January 2009. In the light of increasing threats and challenges to the global cyber space and latest incidents of attacks on CIs worldwide, Ministry of Information Technology, Govt. of India proposed a draft on National Cyber Security Policy (NCSP) for public consultation in March 2011 [35]. The draft aimed at creating a central unit for management of CIs of the country. The policy will designate and authorise agencies to firewall the Indian system against various cyber threats/ attacks and vulnerabilities. Various stakeholder agencies have been involved in safeguarding and protection of Indian cyber space. Headed by a national cyber security coordinator, who reports to the National Security Advisor (NSA), the plan has three components that segregate responsibilities and authority. The existing CERT-IN will be tasked to handle the commercial aspects of cyber security, including 24x7 proactive responses to hackers, cyber-attacks, intrusions and restoration of affected systems. The second aspect of the cyber plan is the creation of a technical-professional body that certifies the security of a network to ensure the overall health of government systems. The third aspect of the plan is cyber defence of CI networks that are vulnerable to hostile foreign governments or proxy entities [35]. The draft is now in the parliament for consideration and approval. NASSCOM (the premier body and the chamber of commerce of the IT-BPO industries in India) along with Data Security Council of India (a focal body on data protection in India, setup as an independent Self-Regulatory Organization (SRO) by NASSCOM) constitute a Cyber Security Advisory Group (CSAG) to work towards public private partnership for capacity building in the area of cyber security in India. The CSAG group has given ten key recommendations to government and industry towards safeguarding the cyber space and CIs of India. The group has also built a report Securing Our Cyber Frontiers that was released by Shri P. Chidambaram, Union Home Minister, Govt. of India on April 30, 2012 [36]. The report talks about the global and Indian initiatives towards cyber security and draws learning and imperatives for India. 3. Research Methodology In this paper, we have applied Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) technique to examine the underlying relationships among identified CI sectors of India. First proposed by J. Warfield in 1973, ISM is a computer assisted learning process that enables individuals or groups involved in a complex situation [37]. It also finds the driving and dependent elements of the situation/ scenario. Further, it divides different elements in to certain levels and gives a graphical representation based on the driving and dependence nature of the elements. Finally, with the help of MICMAC analysis, it divides whole set of elements into four categories. The detailed description of the methodology is given in the following sections. 84

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Thirteen (13) CI sectors were identified for our study. A systematic and rigorous methodological approach was applied to arrive at the list of 13 CI sectors in the context of India. The methodology includes exploring the related literature on the subject, expert opinion and judgements through brainstorming sessions and one to one interviews. A blend of experts from industry, academia and government were involved in the process to have a wide range of perspective. Table 3 shows the list of 13 identified CI sectors of India and their corresponding vital products/ services. Table 3: CI sectors and their vital products/ services

3.1 Developing Hierarchal Relationship among CI Sectors In the process of developing the hierarchal relationship among elements using ISM, first a Structural SelfInteraction Matrix (SSIM) is prepared. SSIM is used to define the nature of relationship between any two elements. The existence of a relationship between any two infrastructures (i and j) with their direction of association was defined [Annexure I]. Experts opinion and judgements were used to identify and define these associations and directional relationships. SSIM is now transformed into a binary matrix, called the initial reachability matrix. This matrix is checked for the transitivity. Final reachability matrix after considering all the transitivity is shown in Annexure I. The driving power and dependence of each element (infrastructure) was calculated. Driving power of an element is the total number of infrastructures (including self) which it may help to achieve. The dependence is the total number of infrastructures which may help achieving it. Final reachability matrix [Annexure I] is now partitioned into different levels, by assessing the reachability and antecedent sets for each element. In our case, the process is completed in six iterations. Table 4: Final iteration results and level partitioning

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Table 4 shows the final level values of the sectors. These levels represent the hierarchy among CI sectors. In next step, a structural model is being generated on the basis of partitioned levels. This resulting graph is called a digraph. After removing all the transitivity, the digraph is finally converted into an ISM model as shown in Fig. 1.

From the ISM model [Fig. 1], it is observed that Energy has come-up as the deep driver among all the CI sectors (as it is at the bottom of the hierarchy). It drives all other sectors connected to it directly or indirectly in the hierarchy. After this, Information Technology and (-tele) Communication sectors come at level V in the hierarchy. They are the next level sectors that are having high driving powers to drive the sectors above them in hierarchy. The increasing penetration of IT and telecommunication sectors in India also justifies the position of these two sectors in the ISM diagram; where all other sectors specially Transportation and Banking and Finance are heavily rely upon the proper functioning and services of these two sectors. As we move up in the hierarchy (from level VI to level I) the driving nature of the elements decreases and the dependence of elements on the infrastructure sectors below them increases. Sectors in the middle of hierarchy (level IV & III), provide an environment that helps in driving the sectors above them and at the same time are dependent also on the sectors below them in hierarchy. Whereas, the top level sectors (level I & II) are highly dependent on the other CI sectors as they appear at 86

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the top of the hierarchy. From the ISM diagram it can be argued that to plan for CI systems while considering their interdependencies, priority should be given to the infrastructure sectors that are having higher driving powers (i.e. the root level sectors) as they are potential sectors on which other sectors are dependent for their proper functioning. Any disturbance to these sectors can cause disruption in the services of others. 4. Developing Insight on Interdependencies among CI Sectors MICMAC analysis is done to draw new insights on the interdependencies of CI Sectors. The objective of MICMAC analysis is to examine the elements (CI sectors) on the basis of their driving power and dependence [38] and cluster them accordingly. This analysis requires a direct relationship matrix [Annexure I] which is obtained by examining the direct relations between elements in the ISM diagraph. This matrix is then multiplied with itself 2, 3, 4, ...N times to find the interconnecting influence paths of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, .Nth order. The iteration is stopped when the resultant matrix becomes stable in terms of the driving power and dependence ranks of the elements. In our analysis, the direct relationship matrix became stable after 2nd iteration. In the next step, the thirteen CI sectors are now classified into four clusters based on their driving power and dependence ranks as shown in Fig. 2. The first cluster consists of CIs that have low driving power but high dependency. Because of this nature, they are termed as Dependent Critical Infrastructures. These infrastructures have more chances of vulnerability, as they are highly dependent on their support infrastructures. From our analysis, it is observed that Banking and Finance, Transportation, Emergency Services, Agriculture and Food, Critical Manufacturing, Postal & Shipping, Defence Industrial Base, Healthcare, and National Icons & Monuments lie in Cluster I. As we see that out of 13 identified CIs, 9 are lying in this cluster. This shows the interdependency of the CIs among each other and hence the potential vulnerability as well. Experts have ranked Banking & Finance and Transportation sectors as the most dependent sectors among all others in the cluster as per Indian environment. Fig. 2: MICMAC analysis (driving power and dependence ranks)

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Second cluster consists of CIs that have low driving power and low dependency. These CIs are relatively disconnected from the system, with which they have only few links, which may be strong. These are Autonomous Critical Infrastructures. Cluster II contains Water Supply, (-tele) Communication, and Information Technology sectors. As it is clearly visible from cluster II that IT and (-tele) Communication sectors are reaching towards the central line of driving power rank, which shows the higher driving property of these sectors. This is also evident from the ISM graph shown in Fig. 1. These sectors (IT and (-tele) Communication) provide the backbone infrastructure support for the other sectors, especially in case of India. There are no CIs in cluster III. This cluster has high driving power and high dependency characteristics that makes this cluster unstable. This is called as Independent or Linkage Critical Infrastructures. Cluster IV has the property of high driving power and low dependency. Energy ranks in this cluster. This is the Independent or Driver Critical Infrastructure. As also evident from the ISM diagram, Energy has come-up as the deep driver (level VI) for other CI sectors. Because of its high driving power, any interruption to this CI can lead to serious implications for other sectors. This analysis further proved the importance of ISM diagraph [Fig. 1] obtained in previous step. The most connected infrastructures in the diagraph are the infrastructures that are highly critical as also evident from MICMAC analysis. As per Indian need and scenario, Information Technology, (-tele) Communication, and Energy are the infrastructure sectors with high driving power. These infrastructures are critical to success of all other infrastructures as the survival of other sectors is highly dependent on the well-being of these CI sectors in India. 5. Discussion In this paper, we have attempted to explore and examine the relationships and interdependencies among CI sectors of India. An examination of direct and indirect relationships among these CI sectors provides a better sense to prioritize and allocate resources to prevent such systems against cyber threats/ attacks. These results may vary from country to country as per the readiness and maturity of the CI sectors. This section gives a glimpse of relationships and interdependencies among different CI sectors in India. 5.1 Relationships ISM diagram [Fig. 1] distinctly separates the identified thirteen CI sectors into six levels. It is clearly evident from the model that Energy, Information Technology and (-tele) Communication sectors at the bottom of the graph are the most important CIs for India. Not only do they drive each other but are also essential for the functioning and well-being of other infrastructure sectors above them in hierarchy. The infrastructures at bottom level (level V & VI) drive the functioning of level IV and others above in hierarchy such as Transportation and Banking. Energy is the basic and important component to run IT and (-tele) Communication sector without which these systems will collapse terribly. Similarly, IT is crucial to the functioning of Banking and Finance sector. Similarly, Transportation (rail, air, ports) is highly dependent on IT, Energy and (-tele) Communication systems. Without proper communication and signalling system, it is hard to imagine the functioning of rail and air transportations. So, a logical conclusion derives from here that as we move up in hierarchy of the ISM model, dependence of elements (infrastructures) increases on the lower level elements. Postal and Shipping, Defence Industrial Base and Critical Manufacturing Industries at level III of the ISM diagram are pivotal to working of all other infrastructures. Any disturbance to these systems will interrupt the connection between various other systems at the either end of the hierarchical network. Top two levels of the hierarchy consist of primarily those infrastructures which have higher dependency as they need high support from other infrastructures below them. For instance Water Supply and Transportation (rail and road) are essential for Agriculture sector. Healthcare systems are driven by Emergency Services that in-turn depend upon (-tele) Communication services. Infrastructures in the middle of hierarchy act as linkages as they connect the infrastructures with each other. 88

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5.2 Interdependencies Interdependencies among CIs have their unique characteristics and effects. With the help of MICMAC analysis, this paper identifies and further examines various interdependencies among these CI sectors. Adapted from Rinaldi et al. [39], these interdependencies are grouped into four broad categories: Physical, Cyber, Geographical, and Logical. In-spite of their diverse characteristics, these interdependencies are overlapping and are not mutually exclusive. Physical Interdependency occurs from a physical linkage of the input-output cascading of two infrastructures. For example, a dam and a water-based electricity generation plant are physically interdependent. In this situation, each one supplies the commodity/ services that are required by other to operate. Many of such interdependencies can be found by examining the ISM diagram [Fig. 1] such as, IT-Energy, IT-(-tele) Communication, etc. An infrastructure has Cyber Interdependency if its communication or other operations are dependent on IT/ ICT infrastructures. Cyber interdependencies resulted because of massive computerization and automation of various infrastructures over the last decades. In modern day organizations, infrastructures are largely dependent on computerized control systems (SCADA systems) to control various industrial processes. Some examples of cyber interdependent systems are IT-Banking, IT/ ICT-Transportation, etc. This has raised new kind of challenges and vulnerabilities to these systems. Some of such incidents have been witnessed in the recent past including Estonia and Georgia. Geographically Interdependent infrastructures are those infrastructures, where a change in the surrounding of one infrastructure triggers changes in other infrastructures. Close spatial proximity is the prime reason behind geographical interdependency. Consider a case of damaging a bridge on which much transportation (road, railway track, etc.) and other services are dependent. Compromise of which can badly affect the functioning of other services. These interdependencies are simply due to proximity. Logical Interdependency of two infrastructures occurs if the state of one depends on the other via a means other than any of above three interdependency methods. It is the outcome of logical cascading that links one infrastructure to another. The power crisis in California in 2001 resulted in the disruption of various sectors like electric power, communication, transmission, and financial services due to the logical dependency of these sectors on each other. Proper planning and alternate mechanisms need to be worked in advance to curb the issue of logical interdependency in disastrous situations. We noted briefly that interdependencies can cause risk to one infrastructure that can be a function of risk for others. In such situations, security becomes a shared responsibility of interdependent infrastructures. There are significant challenges in identifying, understanding, and analyzing the complexities of such interdependencies. Many a times these challenges are even unknown to the people involved in the management of these infrastructures. Educating and spreading awareness among top management, employees and workers in such critical sectors can reduce the chances of compromise that affects all areas of our daily life. 5.3 Implications for Policy Makers With the growing concern for CI protection worldwide, India is also identifying the areas of shortcomings and working towards rectify them. Fast growing IT and Telecommunication sectors have emerged as the major contributors in GDP of India. Whereas related cyber security challenges of these and other sectors has become a critical issue for government and businesses. Some Indian states like Karnataka has shown pro-active approach in this direction and established several cyber-crime police stations way back in October 2001 [40]. In a recent cyber security summit in May, 2012, India's Deputy National Security Advisor has emphasized the need of co-operation among government agencies and between the government and private companies as well [41]. The draft on National Cyber Security Policy published in March 2011 is a strong and effective attempt in this direction. A unified structure and policy for CI 89

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protection is a need of hour for India. The proposed policy document also suggests multi-tier security architecture based on Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) model to effectively address the cyber security challenges of the country. This research study can help in identifying the linkages among various CI sectors in India. Considering interdependency issues of CIs, prioritization and proper allocation of resources (financial, strategic, human, etc.) can help to achieve the aim of a safe and secure cyber space. Various nodal as well sector specific bodies need to be created for immediate response and recovery against advanced cyber-attacks. State agencies under a centralized authority could be constituted to monitor and control cyber activities of various government and private organizations as well. Reforms in the current IT Act and building new regulations and laws to curb the issue of cyber security is must. Policies need to be in place for standardizing various business processes and following international best practices in the area. Training centres and awareness programs need to be chalked out and implemented to continuously update and educate the people responsible for the protection and safe keeping of various CIs of the country. Certain recommendations based on the analysis are given in following section. 6. Recommendations This section provides certain feedbacks in the form of recommendations. The issue need to be addressed on two fronts: Government and Business. While the government need to focus more on the policy part and challenges associated with governance, businesses must look at the issues of authenticity, privacy and identity issues. Ultimately the government and business must go hand-in-hand to offer a safe and secure infrastructure environment to the citizens for their day to day activities. 6.1 Government Since more than 80% of CIs are owned by private corporations (e.g. IT, telecommunication, banking, etc.), it is imperative to have a model wherein there can be an established relationship among them like PPP or in form of regulations, standards, and guidelines. The exhaustive list of CI sub-sectors and the related issues must be considered. There is needed a separate designated authority for every infrastructure sector. The structure must have a leading central authority for spearheading and coordinating all activities within various designated authorities. There is a need to address the issues of cyber-attacks and cyber terrorism and their prevention at the legal level. Therefore, adequate laws are required that can act as a deterrent towards such activities. Apart from securing these systems, it is also important to define and prepare for response to cyber and other disaster situations (e.g. natural hazards). This exercise could also help in identifying the real linkages among various infrastructure sectors and how it can be managed effectively. Application of cloud computing and usage of data servers have removed the physical boundaries of data. Therefore, appropriate policies must be in place when dealing with issues across the international boundaries. There are two sides to every coin; and the same goes for internet and social media. Though it helps people to communicate and share effectively but we have also seen its capability to cripple a society during London riots and Egypt protests. Therefore, in case of national emergencies government must be able to effectively monitor and control the information available on such mediums. There is an urgent need of an audit policy to review all the CIs on a regular basis. This audit must not be limited to the IT and network security itself, but also include physical, human and other aspects associated with it.

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6.2 Business Prioritize and Deploy Critical Resources. As most of the infrastructures are used and managed by private organizations, they need to prioritize and learn how to deploy resources to make effective and efficient use of them. Define and Implement Policies and Compliance Mechanisms. Organizations need to define and develop suitable policies to their specific needs. These policies and procedures must span across all units of the organization. Built-in automation and streamline workflow processes can help to implement these policies in a big way. Information Assurance. Safeguarding critical and sensitive information from unauthorized access and leakage can prevent IT/ ICT and other information infrastructures from cyber threats/ attacks. Clearly defined roles and responsibilities for information generation, flow, storage and destroy can reduce such risks. Service level agreements and identity management procedures need to be clearly laid down. Standardization. Organizations need to stop working on ad-hoc solutions to their security problems. Work environment and procedures must be in compliance with international standards to better collaborate and learn best practices from others. Industry and Government Collaboration. Though CERT-In manages issues of cyber security at a national level, private organizations especially those dealing with CIs or critical information infrastructures must work in close coordination with CERT-In and other government regulatory bodies to implement best practices/ methods and share them across industry.

References [1] R. George, Critical infrastructure protection, International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection 1 (2008) 4-5. [2] Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), Cyber security strategy for Germany (2011). https://www.bsi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/EN/BSI/Publications/CyberSecurity/Cyb er_Security_Strategy_for_Germany.pdf?_blob=publicationFile. [3] Council Directive 2008/114/EC, Official Journal of the European Union. http://eurlex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2008:345:0075:0082:EN:PD F. [4] Critical Infrastructure Resilience Strategy (CIRS), Critical infrastructure resilience of Australia. http://www.ag.gov.au/Nationalsecurityandcounterterrorism/Pages/ CriticalInfrastructureResilience.aspx. [5] Government Accountability Office (GAO), Critical infrastructure protection: DHS has taken action designed to identify and address overlaps and gaps in critical infrastructure security activities, United States (2011). http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11537r.pdf. [6] R. Setola, S.D. Porcellinis, M. Sforna, Critical infrastructure dependency assessment using the input-output inoperability model, International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection 2 (2009) 170-178. [7] R.G. Little, Controlling cascading failure: Understanding the vulnerabilities of interconnected infrastructures, Journal of Urban Technology 9 (1) (2002) 109-123. [8] J. Thomas, K. Cook, Illuminating the path: The research and development agenda for visual analytics, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, California, 2005. [9] W.J. Tolone, Interactive visualizations for critical infrastructure analysis, International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection 2 (2009) 124-134. [10] T. Macaulay, Assessing operational risk in the financial sector using interdependency metrics, International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection 1 (2008) 45-52. [11] M. Hartong, R. Goel, D. Wijesekera, Security and the US rail infrastructure, International 91

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Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection 1 (2008) 15-28. [12] C.E. Restrepo, J.S. Simonoff, R. Zimmerman, Causes, cost consequences and risk implications of accidents in US hazardous liquid pipeline infrastructure, International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection 2 (2009) 38-50. M.G. Jaatun, E. Albrechtsen, M.B. Line, I.A. Tondel, O.H. Longva, A framework for incident response management in the petroleum industry, International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection 2 (2009) 26-37. B. McKay, Lessons to learn for U.S. electric grid critical infrastructure protection, in: Proceedings of the 44th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2011) 1-9. D. Rubbelke, S. Vogele, Impacts of climate change on European critical infrastructures: The case of the power sector, Environmental Science & Policy 14 (2011) 53-63. W. Allen, D.W. Fletcher, K.J. Fellhoelter, Securing critical information and communication infrastructures through electric power grid independence, in: Proceedings of IEICE/IEEE INTELEC-International Telecommunications Energy Conference, October 19-23, 2003. EEI, EEI principles for cyber security and critical infrastructure protection, Edison Electric Institute, Washington DC, USA, September 09, 2010. S. Chiaradonna, F.D. Giandomenico, P. Lollini, Definition, implementation and application of a model-based framework for analyzing interdependencies in electric power systems, International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection 4 (2011) 24-40. M. Beccuti, S. Chiaradonna, F.D. Giandomenico, S. Donatelli, G. Dondossola, G. Franceschinis, Quantification of dependencies between electrical and information infrastructures, International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection 5 (2012) 14-27. V. Igure, S. Laughter, R. Williams, Security issues in SCADA networks, Computers and Security 25 (7) (2006) 498-506. I.N. Fovino, A. Carcano, M. Masera, A. Trombetta, An experimental investigation of malware attacks on SCADA systems, International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection 2 (2009) 139-145. E.K. Bezerra, E.T. Nakamura, S.L. Ribeiro, Critical telecommunications infrastructure protection in Brazil, in: Proceedings of the 1st IEEE International Workshop on Critical Infrastructure Protection (2005). J.L. Rrushi, An exploration of defensive deception in industrial communication networks, International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection 4 (2011) 66-75. E. Luiijf, M. Ali, A. Zielstra, Assessing and improving SCADA security in the Dutch drinking water sector, International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection 4 (2011) 24-34. H. Tschofenig, M. Arumaithurai, H. Schulzrinne, B. Aboba, How secure is the next generation of IP-based emergency services architecture? International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection 3 (2010) 41-50. Y. Rebahi, T.Q. Thanh, M. Tong, F. Lopez, J.M. Lopez, L.A. Teixeira, N. Blanco, An IP based platform for emergency calls and reporting, International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection 4 (2011) 137-153. F. Hare, J. Goldstein, The interdependent security problem in the defense industrial base: An agent-based model on a social network, International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection 3 (2010) 128-139. Y.L. Huang, A.A. Cardenas, S. Amin, Z.S. Lin, H.Y. Tsai, S. Sastry, Understanding the physical and economic consequences of attacks on control systems, International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection 2 (2009) 73-83. S. Rahman, Impact of natural disasters on critical infrastructures, The 1st Bangladesh Earthquake Symposium, December 14-15, 2005. 92

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Annexure I Table 4.1: SSIM matrix for CI sectors

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Understanding Common and Specific applications of E-Government: A Case from India

Velamala Ranga Rao1* ABSTRACT Governments all over the world are trying to change their traditional profile to an electronic one. If attributers of good governance are transparency, efficiency, cost effectiveness and accountability, e-Governance is the means to attain these attributers through application of technology. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has been suggested as the primary tool to enable this goal. Governments adopt Electronic-Government Applications (EGA) from different perspectives, although they align their mission to develop efficient government applications that can satisfy citizens, business and employees. This paper analyzes EGA of different State and National level initiatives in India, in terms of centralization of common aspects of eServices and decentralization of department-specific eServices. This balance between centralized and decentralized eServices enabled is one of the key pillars of success in e-government, which resulted in standardization, best practices sharing and saving cost and time. It also delineates subtle differences in theirtargets to achieve the implementation and proliferation of EGA. It has three sections; the first gives the background of electronic government and its applications, the second proposed common and department specific applications with frame work for EGA, the third examines the EGA of some State governments and National E-Governance Planning (NeGP) initiatives through an exhaustive case study and the third concludes with a discussion. Keywords: E-Government Applications, Centralized applications, Common Applications ICT, Data integration, NeGP Interoperability

1. Introduction In the early 1990s, two changes swept across the world the focus on good governance with increasing private sector participation in delivery of public services and Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) and internet technologies that potentially could connect any and everyone in real time. The concept of e-Government or e-Governance was born through the amalgamation of these two. EGovernance marked a paradigm shift in the philosophy of governance citizen centricity instead of process centricity and large scale public participation through ICTs enablement. 1.1 ICT and e-Government Governments have been engaged in deploying Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for several decades to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their functioning. Early applications were focused on building management information systems for planning and monitoring (Subhash ,2009).ICTs can help governments reinvent themselves and run cheaply, faster, better and produce new outcomes (Heeks, 1999), thus many countries all over the world are pushing e-government enthusiastically. The introduction of ICTs into public sector is not only a technical issue but also a social one in that many factors are involved, such as politics, economy, organisation, culture, population and so on. Hence, it is desperately necessary to study e-government in a broader social context. The adoption of ICT in public sector was believed to facilitate the desire for change and bring tremendous benefits: the delivery of better
1

Soil And Land Use Survey Of India, Department of Agriculture & Coperation, Min. of Agriculture,Govt. of India *Corresponding Author: (Email: velamala.ranga@gmail.com,)

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and integrated public services, bridging the digital dividend, achieving lifelong learning, rebuilding government customer relationship, promoting economic development and creating a more participative government (Reynolds and Regio, 2001).The ICT resources and capabilities of government organizations are increasingly becoming an integral component for transforming the delivery of services. ICT capabilities refer to the ability of an organization to leverage its assets to fulfil its Information Technology-related strategic objectives. ICT capabilities include both the technical and managerial expertise required to provide reliable ICT-enabled services (Broadbent and Weill, 1999).The use of ICT is also seen as opening up new opportunities for developing countries to harness these technologies and services to serve their development goals . In order to take advantage of the ICT, developing countries are encouraged to exploit the potential of ICT by investing in their infrastructure and training (Mansell & When, 1998). A successful e-Governance intervention requires a holistic approach as it encompasses domain knowledge, process reform management, resources management, project management and change management. In each one of these, Knowledge Management (KM) is an important component. Knowledge Management (KM), is defined as a discipline that promotes an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving and sharing enterprise information assets. (Gartner Group). The Features of Information and Communication Technologies that enable e-Government services are given in Table 1.

Table [1]: Features of ICT that enable e-Govt services E-Government not only provides benefits such as fast, inexpensive, trustworthy, and reliable services to households and businesses but also offers the potential to reshape the public sector and remake the relationships between citizens, businesses, and the government by allowing for open-communication, participation, and public dialogues in formulating national regulations. (Mirchandani , et. al., 2006).The Table 2 shows the beneficial changes to government work processes that come from effective ICTsupported reform.

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1.2 Types of e-Government There are different types of e-Government based on using ICT to facilitate relationships between government and other key stakeholders. The types of relationships are a) Citizens (G2C Governmentto-Citizen) : Government-to-Citizen e-Government focuses on making information accessible to citizens online. This is referred to as a citizen-centric e-Government when governments take further steps to provide online services organized around citizen needs b) Business (G2B Government-to-Business): Government-to-Business e-Government focuses on strategies using ICTs to facilitate government interactions with the private sector to procure goods and services and to coordinate transactions from private companies. One approach is known as electronic procurement (e-procurement) c) Other governments (G2G Government-to-Government):. Very closely related, Government-to-Government eGovernment focuses on providing services to governments through intergovernmental relations. This includes activities to coordinate stakeholders from the national, state/provincial, and local government as in the case of humanitarian or crisis response d) Employees (G2E Government-to-Employees). Government-to-Employee e-Government focuses on relationships within government among employees to coordinate internal operations and improve the internal efficiency of business processes (ITU,2008). 1.3 Citizen oriented governance Transforming public service delivery through e-Government requires a significant shift in the way that services are designed and delivered. Shifting from the agency-centric approach within the public sector to one of citizen-centricity is a fundamental step toward achieving e-Government. This includes, delivering Government information and services through channels that are convenient and accessible to citizens and building confidence in public services (Adam Montserin,2009).It is undoubtedly one of the most important considerations for the governments all over the world who are busy steering their respective countries into the 21st century. With the awareness levels of the common people on the rise, citizens demand more access to government information and an effective and easy interface in their dealings with the government. A more informed citizen is in a better position to exercise his/her rights, and better able to carry out his/her responsibilities within the community. Obviously then, more and more citizens these days expect to be involved in the process of governance and to receive a higher standard of service and care from their Governments ( Dinesh, 2008). The Citizen-Centric criteria based definition of egovernment is given at Table 3.

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1.4 E-government Applications In general, government is the single largest user of Information Technology in many countries. In many developing countries, the government is the predominant consumer of Information Technology products. Governments exist to serve their citizens. Their primary activity is record-keeping. The public administration process is, to a large extent, virtually a process of data/information processing. Government authorities collect and process various data and information - on individuals, families, organizations, and companies, and then on the basis of these data and information, produce new information for the public, such as, policies, strategies, plans, regulations, and various services to the public. Essentially, Information Technology is used to support information processing of governments, including data gathering, storing, processing, dissemination and utilization (Source: A guide to effective use of Information Technology in the public sector of developing countries).One objective of eGovernment applications is to reduce or eliminate the strict silos of government policy creation and service delivery. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has been suggested as the primary tool to enable this goal. E-government solutions can be tiered into two layers: one is data layer, which deals with the identification of structure of data, its attributes, constraints, relationship etc. and the second layer is application layer, which deals with the user interface and services to connect with the data layer. The fundamental principal of database is to present unfired representation of organizational data and can be achieved by various approaches of schema and data integration. If attributers of good governance are transparency, efficiency, responsiveness cost effectiveness and accountability, e-Governance is the means to attain these attributers through application of technology (CAG,2009).E-government can lead to higher productivity by interconnecting different government agencies and different offices of an agency, enabling them to improve communication by sharing data and documents. Integrated Financial Management Systems have been implemented by a large number of countries by networking treasuries at different locations. Some countries have used e-government applications to reach out to communities that do not have easy access to government information. Many of these applications, done on a pilot basis, require government departments to invest a significant amount of time in developing content that is relevant and useful to the community need (Subhash,2009). Zuboff(1988) indicated that information systems could be used to automate which is defined as IT systems that are developed to replace manual activities (Remenyi, 1999), informate which is defined as IT systems that provide specific information to management, which allow them to make more insightful 99

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decisions and therefore use those organizations resources more efficiently ((Remenyi, 1999) or transformate which is defined as IT systems that make a radical impact on the way in which the organization conducts its business, either by the transformation of its current activities and process, or by the introduction of new lines of business((Remenyi, 1999).Within the past 10 years governments across the world have adopted electronic government as a means of delivering of Government information services 24x7 basis ( Norris & Lloyds 2006).The e-government projects(Applications) aim is to provide convenient access to information services, alternative transaction medium, and to enrich the quality of its collaboration with citizens and business (Lean,2009). This concept has influenced thinking in eGovernment (Nygren, 2010). E-government services can play an important role in reforming government internal work processes to advance efficiency (Lee, 2010). In particular, improving government work processes using ICT leads to increased accuracy by providing integrated reporting systems of central and local governments. Furthermore, it also results in advanced efficiency by sharing information both within and between agencies (Lee, 2010).One of the important tools utilized in accomplishing business process innovation is Business Process Reengineering (BPR) (Lee, 2010). BPR includes redesigning the work flow within or between departments for enhancing process effectiveness and efficiency ((Sharifi and Zarei, 2004). In addition, BPR in e-governance includes significant analysis and thorough re-engineering of workflows and processes in the organization (Behara G. et al., 2009). BPR can help in achieving a high level of process performance and service delivery for government employees and citizens (Behara G. et al., 2009). Moreover, a BPR project reduces barriers around the decision making process (Sharifi and Zarei, 2004). The use of Information Technology in the public sector has been developed in two dimensions: office automation and information systems. The first dimension (i.e., office automation) aspires to raise efficiency and productivity of office business; while the second aims at organizing and utilizing information to support administration and management, as well as policy development and decision making, so as to improve effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity of an organization as a whole. Government, like many other organizations, can be viewed as a three-level entity: (i) strategic, (ii) managerial or administrative (tactical), and (iii) operational. Each level represents a different level of control and has a different level of data requirement and extensive view of the government. Corresponding to the three levels of government organizations, government information systems also can be divided into three different categories: (i) operational systems, (ii) management information systems, and (iii) decision-making support systems .There are two special types of information systems which have great potential in public administration and are worth mentioning here: Documents Management and Retrieval Systems(DMRSs) and Geographic Information Systems (GISs) (Source: A guide to effective use of Information Technology in the public sector of developing countries).E-government applications normally evolve through a four-stage process as depicted in Figure 2. The first stage includes the publication of information on a website for citizens to seek knowledge about procedures governing the delivery of different services. The second stage allows for interactivity online. The Citizens can download applications for receiving services. The third stage involves electronic delivery of documents. The fourth stage results in electronic delivery of servicers where more than one department may be involved in processing a request or service, given at Fig. 2 (Source: Gartner Dataquest November 2000).

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Fig 2: E-Government Evolution: Four Critical stages (Source: Gartner Dataquest, November 2000). According to Ibrahim et al (2011), ICT applications in government organizations can be classified into three categories: 1) Common Applications used by all government organizations such as HR systems, financial systems and ECM. 2) Applications that are used by many government organizations such as recruitment applications 3) Applications that are used by one government organization such as a core business application.

Based on the above literature review, in the next section , this paper proposes the two types of Egovernment application levels namely Common applications ( Core Business) and Department-specific applications and discussed in detail in the next section. 2. Common and Specific Applications of E-Government In this section, this paper describes the proposed E-government Applications in terms of centralization of common aspects of eServices and decentralization of department-specific eServices. This balance between centralized and decentralized eServices enabled was one of the key pillars of success in egovernment, which resulted in standardization, best practices sharing and saving cost and time. The 101

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proposed E-Government application levels are studied through an exhaustive case study using various ongoing e- government projects in different states across India mentioned in the Section 3. This may help to the readers and leaders to understand various e-government applications and its status. The common and department-specific applications are explained in detail with examples in Section 2.1 and 2.2 respectively 2.1 Common Applications Common applications (also called Core Applications or centralized applications) are those applications, which address the common requirements for all the departments and citizen centric functions for e.g. Personal Management System covering Personal Pay, Leave, Loan, pension, maintenance of service book, Grievance Management System and Budget Accounts Management System (BAMS) , Procurement of goods and services ,Citizen Database such as Unique-ID of India etc. Therefore common aapplications are low hanging fruits which could be used to achieve transparency and efficiency.

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2.2 Specific Applications of E-Government Department Specific applications are to cater to processes which are specific to a department such as Education, Health Information System, Transport, Land Records Management System etc., given at Table 6.

2.3 A Frame work for Electronic Government Applications (EGA) The proposed frame work for Electronic-Government Applications (EGA) is given in Fig 3. It has four layers namely Users, Channels; Network enabled data processing applications (Common and Departmentspecific applications) and Data analysis layer. Some benefits with common applications are: Standardization of common process, equipped with uniform applications such as acts, rules, automates routine tasks (Work flow / Business rules / Processes etc. these centralized common aspects were provided to the government departments through a single centralized entity with well defined common tools known as synergistic tools. These common applications mentioned in Table 5 helped to achieve cost savings by providing commonly eServices. Specific applications, mentioned in Table 6 (decentralization approach) not only gave the government departments autonomy and creativity; it also accelerated the 103

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enabling of services by various government departments. The proposed frame work may help to readers and Government. In the next section, the proposed framework studied through an extensive case study.

Fig 3: A Frame work for Electronic-Government Applications (EGA) (Source: Author)

3. A Case Study India, the largest democracy in the world, is set to emerge as an ICT Superpower in this millennium. Realising the recognition of electronic governance as an important goal by Governments world over, Indian Government has also laid a lot of emphasis on anytime, anywhere delivery of Government services (GIGW, 2008).. The Indian government has for the past 3 decades widely acknowledged that expanded use of ICT in the public sector can offer important benefits such as improved planning and monitoring mechanisms, cost savings through rationalisation, and more effective administration and delivery of certain public services ( Shirin Madon,2004).Presently, in India, different government organizations, both at the Union and State Government levels, are engaged in carrying out a study of their business processes with the objective of re-designing them using ICT. These efforts are at various stages of planning/completion (CAG, 2009). e-Governance is an important tool to enhance the quality of government services to citizens, to bring in more transparency, to reduce corruption and subjectivity, to reduce costs for citizens and to make government more accessible. A large number of initiatives have been taken in this category by the Union and the State Governments SARC(2008).Egovernment services have been high on the agenda of many countries for over a decade. The primary motive for launching egovernment services from the perspective of the government is often to improve the efficiency and cost effectiveness of operations; reducing corruption is often not stated as one of the objectives. However, studies have shown that e-government programs have a great impact on user perception of corruption and transparency. For example, the World Bank (2009a) found that in India, users perception of corruption in the electronic land registration and records services called Bhoomi, CARD, and Kaveri was lower when compared to the older manual systems. India has become a global power house in software and software services sector. Over the years various initiatives have been taken in the Information Technology sector to foster innovation, improve delivery of e-Services to citizens and bring about profound change in the way business is conducted and the way Government works. Over the past decade or so, there have been several e-Governance initiatives in the country at the National, State, district and even block level. Some of them have been highly successful and are ready for replication across other States while some have not produced the desired results or withstood the test of time ( Source: Report of the Working Group on Information Technology Sector Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012 17). 104

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In India, the way government institutions conduct their business has evolved over time and is codified in different Statutes, Rules, Regulations and procedural manuals enacted or formulated over a wide span of time (with many processes even continuing from the colonial period). On the other hand, the scope and complexities of governance along with the government machinery have expanded over time. The advent of ICT has led to the recognition that these technologies provide a unique opportunity to redesign government processes not only to provide better services and reliable information to citizens but also to improve efficiency and effectiveness within government institutions (CAG (2009). Information Technology has tremendous potential for the future of India. In view of the overall priorities of the Government in the 12th Five Year Plan a focused and coordinated push in the IT sector during 12th Plan period will help India achieve faster, sustainable and more inclusive growth. Accordingly the vision and mission for IT sector for the Twelfth Plan will be on e-Development of India through a multi pronged strategy of e-Infrastructure creation to facilitate and fast track e-governance, promotion of Electronics hardware manufacturing & Information Technology Information Technology Enabled Services (ITITeS) Industry, providing support for creation of Innovation / Research & Development (R&D), building knowledge network and securing Indias cyber space. ( Report of the Working Group on Information Technology Sector Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012 17). 3.1 State Government Initiatives Some successful initiatives of Common and Specific Applications in different State Governments of India are given in Table 7.

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Table 7. : Some Common and Specific Applications usage in various State Governments [ Source: Respective State Govt. Websites]

The processing of information in the Government is predominantly workflow intensive. Information moves in the form of paper files from one officer to another for seeking opinions, comments, approvals etc. SmartGov has been developed to streamline operations, enhance efficiency through workflow automation and knowledge management for implementation in the Andhra Pradesh Secretariat and Integrated Workflow & Document Management System (IWDMS) of Gujarat given in Table 8.

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Table 8: IWDMS of Gujarat and SmartGov of Andhra Pradesh 3.2 National Level Initiatives The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) of India was approved in the year 2006 with a vision to Make all Government services accessible to the common man in his locality, through common service delivery outlets and ensure efficiency, transparency & reliability of such services at affordable costs to realize the basic needs of the common man. The NeGP comprises of various Mission Mode Projects (See Table 9) are owned and spearheaded by various line ministries. The State Governments are responsible for implementing State MMPs, under the overall guidance of respective Line Ministries in cases where Central Assistance is also required. (Source: www.mit.gov.in). The Current Status of NeGP initiatives are given in Table 9.

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Table 9 : Current Status of NeGP MMPs and Common Service Centres (CSCs)

Table 9: Current Status of NeGP MMPs and Common Service Centres (CSCs) [Source: (NeGP, 2012) and (CSC,2012)] Box 3: Website: Government Departments especially those with extensive public interface are increasingly using websites as a tool to reach out to the citizens. With digital penetration increasing in India, in times to come websites would be the preferred mode of contact for a majority of the citizens with the government departments. However, these websites follow different Technology Standards, Design Layouts, Navigation Architecture, or, in simple terms, different look and feel as well as functionality. This invariably requires a common citizen to familiarize himself/herself with the functionality of each individual website which results in a lot of inconvenience, thus defeating the very purpose of these initiatives. It is in this context that the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances in association with Department of Information Technology and National Informatics Centre took up the initiative to bring out the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites ( Source: Guidelines for Indian Govt. Websites, NIC) 3.3) Observations and Findings In India, majority of government departments, computerisation exists to the extent of having desktop computers for the required staff and department-wise applications. These applications, however, cannot interface with each other and significantly impact interoperability not only currently but also in future 108

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when integrated and holistic IT implementation will become the norm of the day. It is vital to ensure stability of tenure of the key personnel championing an e-Governance initiative. Many government projects have faced problems when the administrative officer responsible for a specific programme leaves or gets transferred and some of the more successful e-Governance initiatives have faded into oblivion because of this brain drain (Source:. TCS white paper ). Based on the observation on the literature and case study, there has been a gap in the common and core applications in EGA . There are different architectures, forms, names, look and feel are using for the same applications for an instance in the 1) Common applications such as a) Computerisation of Salary Accounts (COSA) and PAO-2000 for Automation of accounting functions are used for Accounting Applications b) e-Employees.Net and Human Resource Management System for G2E 2) Core applications such as : a) Bhu-Abhilekh , Bhulekh ,Bhoomi, CARD, Dharani and E-Dhara for Computerization of Land Records. B) Health.Net , HEALING and HMIS for Health Department c) KAVERI, SARTHI for Department of Stamps and Registration Automation are used. Event through project names may not give problems with applications, but it may confuse among Government departments. Box 4: Discussed briefly on Land Records as an example: The evolution of the land administration system in India has been a complex process, well recorded in historical chronicles. In this electronic age, as the country embarks on e-governance initiatives, it is necessary to revamp the land administration system to keep pace with the times to provide service that are fair, efficient and transparent to the citizens of the country. Though many States have completed, but some of the states need further guidance and support for its effective and timely implementation Recently, the Union Government has accorded priority to this scheme to institutionalize the mechanism for regular mutation/updation of Record of Rights (ROR) and strengthen, the delivery system(RCOCLR, 2005).Land Records is one of the projects pertaining to pre-NeGP phase which covers computerisation of Land Records. In the pre-NeGP phase, two schemes of the Ministry of Rural Development a) Computerisation of Land Records (CLR) and b) Strengthening of Revenue Administration & Updation of Land Records (SRA & ULR) were being implemented. These are fully operational in 13 States. These two schemes CLR and SRA&ULR have been merged into a new scheme called the National Land Records Modernisation Programme (NLRMP). This scheme aims at providing integrated land related information and services to citizens (SARC, 2008). National EGovernance Action Plan and suggested that this scheme be completed on mission mode. It should have the capability to integrate with GIS and web-based applications with facilities for collation and conversion of attribute data at different levels and also have the capability to import data from total station GPS and ground survey data .The available digital land records data is mostly in ISCII 8.0 for providing local language interface. In order to bring out the desired uniformity in terms of storage, display and presentation, the fonts and storage formats for various datasets have to be standardized, without which it will not be possible to converge & understand data in multiple languages. Therefore, it is suggested that UNICODE may be used as the standard encoding format.(RCOCLR, 2005). According to 11th report on Second Administrative Reforms Commission (2008),No State in India has reached an evolved stage in land records computerization which integrates the functioning of the three related agencies 1)Revenue department where land records are maintained 2) Survey department where maps of land parcels are maintained 3) Registration department where deeds of sale/purchase of land are registered and maintained .There is a great deal of difference in the performance of the best and the worst State in case of these computerized applications. Given the fact that the processing steps in the delivery of these services can be similar across the States, there is no explanation for the variations in performance, other than the varying quality of process reform and design of these systems. This indicates that each State has chosen to design its application without learning from the available best practices. 109

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Therefore, for new initiatives, it is important to build the required capacity in both, the public and private sectors, for conceptualizing, designing and implementing basic process reforms ( SARC, 2008). Existing techniques and procedures for land record digitization include manually performing geographic data entry during digitization phase. Existing land records are kept in various forms varying from state to state. During the process of digitization for each plot geographic information is extracted from existing records and entered in database. This process is prone to manual or intentional errors especially for information related to physical coordinates of land boundaries. These errors result in conflicts in land ownerships.(Rajesekhar, P.V, 2006).Also Inconsistencies in database design and structure may difficult to integrate data for generation of Management Information System (MIS) reports for planning and development purposes. Therefore we need common standards across the Nation and hence there is an urgent need for developments and implementation of unified applications across India. Also there is need to Integrating land records data with cadastral maps and land registration to achieve Inter-operability and creating a Comprehensive Land Information System (LIS).Further the project like Computer-aided Administration of Registration Department (CARD) implementation started in the year 1998, integrated with Land Records (NLRMP) , a Mission Mode Project under NeGP, which was initiated in the year 2006 is a very big task. The States like Madhya Pradesh providing GIS based solution for querying and printing of land records information in Local language. Users can take the printouts of the selected khasra (plots) along with the details in the local language. The same may be implemented in other states ( PPT of Dr.Deb .J.P). Mobile based applications are not using for Land record verification .India has seen widespread penetration of mobile devices. A lot of these devices come equipped with GPS. On the other hand land owners face difficulties in verifying land records. Government is moving towards e-governance to m-Governance and allowing citizens to use services over electronic medium. Mobile being most widely used medium can help in this case and mobile applications are being encouraged that allows citizens to use these services from mobile phone. GIS and Mobile applications should use not only for Land applications but also for G2G, G2C, G2B and G2E applications. In some governments common applications are providing in various formats such as PDF, word and manual. Centralized applications are need to be developed for common applications, for an example Delhi Govt already implemented for quick search and easy maintenance. Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG, 2009) mentioned that At present, various State Governments are choosing their own ways of selectively computerising their processes and provide Egovernance. Many of these programs are vendor-driven and not scalable. It is critical to develop and enforce citizen/business entitlement standards uniformly over all states and central ministries and functions, spanning from voting, taxes, certificates, financial products, law-enforcement and welfare for individuals, properties of land, institutions, businesses etc. These standards should not be hardwarecentric and vendor dependent but should enable easy participation by any State, Panchayat Institution, business, NGO or citizen, whenever they decide. Also the CAG mentioned that to enforce standards and to keep the governance uniformly responsive and transparent, it is recommended that State Governments use templates created by the Central Government to offer localised data and services in Indian languages (CAG, 2009). The most severe challenge faced by the developing countries is the inadequacy of ICT infrastructure. Most government agencies operate with manual systems and procedures, making the digitization of archived data a mammoth task. Departments are not interconnected as the networking infrastructure is weak outside the capital cities and large urban centres. In the absence of countrywide policies on data standardization and data sharing, security provisions have not been adequately handled in designing systems (Subhash, 2009).

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Box 5: International Scenario: A Success story of Dubai e-Government: Due to vast difference in the technical competence of various government departments and the departments not equipped with uniform (common) applications, Dubai e-Government adopted a hybrid strategy for e-services implementation. Decentralization of the services (Department-specific) of every department and centralization of the common services (AI-Shair,2005). The decentralization is approach not only gave the government departments autonomy and creativity; it also accelerated the enabling of services by various government departments The common (centralized) aspects of e-services are providing through a single centralized entity which defined common tools known as synergistic tools, this helped the government to achieve cost saving by providing commonly utilized e-services .The Synergistic tools are ePAy(Centralized Payment Gateway),eHost (Content Management System and hosting services provided to all the government departments to host and publish content for their portals in the shared infrastructure ), eLibrary (Centralized Library database),mDubai(Communication between citizens and government via SMS), askDubai(Unified contact center to all government departments, eJob (Unified recruitment service to all Governments) ( AI-Shair,2005). In the next section, this paper provides certain issues and challenges related to EGA. 4. Issues and Challenges Information and communication technologies have a valuable potential to help Indian central and state governments deliver good governance to their constituents. Yet that potential remains largely untapped to date and there are various gaps hindering effective implementation of e-Governance in India. The Government of India has set aside a huge corpus for the expansion of current initiatives and faster development of upcoming initiatives. It is planning to take a focused approach on the development of technical infrastructure and human resources to ensure effective e-Service delivery. This will involve proper training of employees and individuals as well as adoption of emerging technologies, such as cloud computing and diversifying the means of service delivery through mobile phones (NCEG,2012). The public sector is characterised by a multitude of items which are amenable to different meanings, in domains such as laws and regulations, citizen services, administrative processes, various documentation and best practice examples. This is accentuated by the vast amounts of unstructured legacy information accumulated through the centuries. To this, one should add the multiplicity of languages spanning regions, nations and even whole continents. Technically, these differences belong to the sphere of semantics. There is no currently available automated way to reconcile fully differences of this kind, primarily due to the dominant role which the associated context plays in the formation of the actual meaning. When it comes to large-scale application the practical problem to be faced is agreement at both policy-making level and at administrative and technical level, given the vast size of the terminological system and the entities (communal, national, regional) involved (Kotsiopoulos,2009). Heeks (2003) points out that the e-Government system should be country specific and not an off-the-shelf system from another country. Avision et. al (2004) point out that the process of information systems development is a formal step by step , almost scientific process that does not coincide with practical experience. Agarwal (2007) point out that a top-down approach has been followed by several e-Government applications which has often not worked and the resultant system has not been able to fulfil the needs of the citizens despite the cost of these applications. Sarantis et. al (2009) argue that some of the project management approaches that are proposed for e-Government application implementation are more suited to the management of the overall development of information systems, rather than being directly targeted to a specific e-Government need. According to Abrahams (2009) e-Government applications face challenges because of the fragmented nature of government administration and its communication processes. Significant numbers of e-Government initiatives are information based and only a few include interactive content.

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Complexity in e-Government applications poses a particular challenge (Purao & Desouza, 2011).Governments are experiencing budgetary constraints and e-Government applications are being subject to a higher degree of scrutiny to evaluate whether they are delivering the benefits they have promised. As stake holders are both internal and external to the project, it becomes a difficult task to ensure that , the project satisfies the various need of the community of stakeholders (Kamal et. al (2011). The introduction of ICTs into public sector is not only a technical issue but also a social one in that many factors are involved, such as politics, economy, organisation, culture, population and so on. Hence, it is desperately necessary to study e-government in a broader social context In India e-governance still seems to be in growth stage. Various experiments are being conducted by governments at various levels (Centre, State and Local level) to implement e-government initiatives. (Barry Fulton 2003). Although a few projects of e-Governance in few states have won international awards yet it has not been able to make rid progress in other e-governance projects due to the several operational ,economical, personnel, planning and implementation issues. It has been notices that eGovernance in India has focused heavily towards investing in hardware and very little on developing software and services. The reason for slow evolution of egovernance in India include lack of IT literacy and awareness especially amongst the rural masses, underutilization of existing ICT infrastructure (Preethi, 2009) . In the land records computerization project, for example, the emphasis was on digitizing manual records, while in case of property registration, the emphasis was on converting the process of manual copying of registered deeds to scanning them. In many cases, even basic process reforms like simplification and rationalizing of forms, and putting in place an appointment and queue management system have not been undertaken. That is why most projects have not been able to harness the potential benefits that eGovernance can offer (SARC,2008). In India, governments, both at the Union and State levels, have witnessed the intervention of KM initiatives albeit in a sporadic manner. These efforts have been initiated either because of the interest of some Government officials or due to a push from technology/consulting companies to sell their products/services. There have been no instances of KM initiatives undertaken as a matter of policy SARC(2008). While developing applications the government should note on various issues such as (i) Policy formulation & Planning regarding (a) Hardware Procurement (b) System Software Procurement (c) Application Software Development Policy including Local Languages.(ii) Administrative Structure of the Department along with all its field organizations (iii) Role of Controlling Authority (Ministry/Department) with details of special powers, if any (iv) Private sector involvement (v) Capacity building for employees and masses (vi) Budgetary provisions (vii) Cyber Law. Funding is an important egovernment issue because IT projects are costly and their success is uncertain. Legislatures must choose between multiple programs during the budget process and, in many cases, egovernment competes with other needs for funding. In government departments there appear to be internal inefficiencies in terms of ICT and human resources (Farelo & Morris, 2006). According to Abrahams (2009) e Government applications face further challenges because of the fragmented nature of government administration and its communications processes. Emery et.al (2009) and Maumbe et. al (2008) points out that eGovernment models are primarily developed within a western context. There appears to be a need for a more regionalcentric e Government model. Databases with hundreds of fields and tables and millions of records and of a multi gigabyte size are common place and terabyte databases are beginning to appear. Methods for dealing with larger data 112

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volumes include more efficient algorithms (Agrawal et al. 1996) are to be taken care. Further Information retrieval is simply not enough anymore for decision-making. Confronted with huge collections of data, we have now created new needs to help us make better managerial choices. These needs are automatic summarization of data, extraction of the essence of information stored and the discovery of patterns in raw data ( Osmar R. Zaiane, 1999). At present in India, personal information sharing among government departments and their agencies does not exist and there is an urgent need to not only accelerate information distribution, but also to broaden the scope of organisations so that they can share data (Ranga Rao, 2008).E-Government applications do not need only the software development; it also requires the quality of data, procedures, methods, security, reliability and availability etc. Software engineering provides different standards like CMM, ISO, SEI levels etc these standards always do not ensure the quality of software products. In many cases, e-Governance applications require the software to be developed using regional languages Thus it differs from other functional units and makes the system rigid. Governments must understand the local context and local practices in which ICTs will be used to provide e-Government services (Walsham, Robey et al. 2007). Generally, developing countries often adopt ICTs and software that are designed in the developed world and introduced to them through technology transfer programs e-Government requires the government leaders and managers to address three issues: First, how do you take the technologies of the Internet and integrate them with existing information systems and existing organizational and institutional processes? ,Second, how do you build e-Government applications to meet the needs, capabilities and values of the end user? Third, how do you overcome the reality of the organizational, economic, political, technological, legal, and local environment that through complex factors influence and define the context of the e-Government service? (ITU, 2008). Government solutions are not a One Size Fits All solution (AI-Eryani, 2009).Each application must take into account the variable factors influencing that application. Because every society has different needs and priorities, there is no one model for e-government and no universal standard for e-government readiness. Each societys and governments readiness for e-government would depend upon which objectives and specific sectors it chooses as priorities, as well as the resources available at a given point in time (which might depend on budgets, donors, etc). 5. Conclusion The purpose of this paper is to understand various e-Government applications (EGA) in terms of common & department-specific applications through an extensive case study in India and also provide a frame work. This will help to the government in quick decision making and applying rules and regulations uniformly to all the departments. However, Stakeholders involvements appear to be one key factor in the success of an e-Government application. It is generally believed that ICT has considerable potential to improve governance capabilities and transform relations with citizens. India, like many other countries, embraces e-government enthusiastically but encounters big challenges at the same time. Therefore, the successful development of e-government applications becomes a pivotal issue in India. E-Government is not a single event or a short project, but a long-term evolutionary process of transforming government to focus on citizen services. Thus, it is necessary to establish a high-level egovernment roadmap (top-down design) with a bottom-up detailed implementation plan. In the top-down design, the roadmap should include long-term strategic plans, as well as corresponding annual plans. It is important that the services are prioritized and included in the roadmap tasks. UNAPCICIT (2012).

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References: 1. Abrahams, L. (2009). E-Goverance Policy 1999-2009;Paths and limitations to progress. Journal of public administration. 44(41) (41), p1011-1026.. 2. Adam Montserin (2009), Improved Government Better Service,2010 2014 CARICOM, eGovernment Strategy. 3. AI-Eryani, A.Y.(2009).e-Government services in Yemen :Success and failure factors, factors, faculty of science bulletin , Sanaa University Vol,22,p.61-74),. 4. Agarwal ,A. (2007). e-Governance , Case Study , Hyderabad :Universities Press. 5. Behara G., V., V. & M., R. (2009) . Service Oriented Architecture for E-Governance. BP Trends. 6. CAG (2009). Comptroller and Auditor General of India, National Seminar on e-Governance. 21-22 July 2009,,Resource Material , Available at : http://www.icisa.cag.gov.in/EGovernance/Resource%20material%20for%20e%20gov%20seminar.pd f, Accessed November 10,.2012. 7. CSC (2012). Citizen Service Centres , Rolled Out as on 31st August 2012, Available at ,http://www.negp.gov.in/Services/MMPServices.aspx?id=1&page=centralMMPServices) and http://csc.gov.in/cscstatus/cscstatus.html, Accessed October 5.2012. 8. Deb J. P. Role of Geospatial Technology in Land Information System(LIS) ,for Effective Land Administration, PPT , Available at :http://dolr.nic.in/Presentations%20Symposium%20on%20Towards%20Effective%20Land%20Admi nistration%20in%20India/NLR MP%20Session.pdf, Accessed August 10, 2012. 9. Dinesh Chandra Misra. Defining E-government: A Citizen-centric Criteria-based Approach , Available at :http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/apcity/unpan026250.pdf, visited on November 11,.2012. 10. EGRM (2006). E-Governance Road Map volume (2)- Strategy & Blueprint for Government of Tripura, , Agartala. Available at http://tripura.nic.in/portal/More_Info/document/Department%20of%20information%20technology/EGovernance%20Roadmap%20- %20Volume%20II.pdf, Assessed September 7, 2012. 11. Feeny and Willcocks (1998). The Feeny-Willcocks Governance Framework Revisited: Implementing Core IS Capabilities , Available at http://is2.lse.ac.uk/wp/pdf/wp150.pdf, Accessed August 7, 2012. 12. Gartner Dataquest, November 2000. 13. Govt. Information system :A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE USE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR OF 14. DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, Available at http://unpan.org/publications/PDFs/ELibrary% 20Archives/1995%20Government%20Information%20Systems.pdf, Accessed September 15, 2012 15. Guidelines for Indian Govt. Websites, Available at http://web.guidelines.gov.in/overview.php Accessed September 1, 2012 16. Heeks, R. (1999). Reinventing Government in the Information Age, Routledge, New York. 17. Heeks, R. (2003). Most e-Government-for-development project fail: How can risks be reduced ? ,Available at, http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/NISPAcee/UNPAN015488.pdf, Accessed July 1, 2012 18. Ibrahim A. Alghamdi (2011). E-Government Readiness Assessment for Government Organizations in Developing Countries 19. ITU (2008). Electronic Government for Developing Countries(2008), Available at : http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/cyb/app/docs/egov_ for_dev_countries-report.pdf, Accessed July 15, 2012. 20. Karnal,M., Weerakkody., & Irani, Z. (2011) , Analyzing the role of stakeholders in the adoption of technology integration solutions in UK local governments: An exploratory study. Government Information Quarterly, 28(2),200-201. 21. Kotsiopoulos.I, and Rentzepopoulos.P (2009),Bringing Together and Accelerating e-government Research in the EU, Available at : http://www.epractice.eu/files/information_integration.pdf, Accessed July 20, 2012 114

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22. LEE, Y. N. (2010). E-Government Application [Online]. UN-APCICT. Available at : http://www.unapcict.org/academy, Accessed November 10 2012]. 23. Mansell, Robin and Wehn, Uta. 1998. Knowledge Societies: Information Technology for Sustainable Development. New York: Oxford University Press. 24. Mirchandani D.A., Johnson Jr. J.H and Joshi K. 2008. Perspectives of citizens towards e-government in Thailand and Indonesia: A multi-group analysis. Information System Frontier, 10: 483-497. 25. NCEG (2012).National conference on e-governance, background paper, Available at:http://darpg.nic.in/darpgwebsite_cms/Document/file/bg_paper_15nceg.pdf, Accessed August 8, 2012. 26. NeGP (2012) .National e-Governance Plan: Status and Way Forward. Available at : http://egovreach.in/uploads/presentation/aizwal/Dr_Rajendra_Kumar_NeGP_Overview_Aizawl_18_ 06_2012_2.pdf, Accessed October 10, 2102. 27. Nygren, K.G, (2010) , Monotonized Administrators and personalized bureaucrats.Transforming Government People,process and Policy 4(4), 322-337. 28. Osmar R. Zaiane, (1999), Introduction to Data Mining 29. Purao, S., & Desouza, K. (2011) ,Looking for clues to failures in Large-scale, public sector projects: A case study 30. Preethi, Mahajan (2009). e-governance initiatives in India with special reference to Punjab, Asiapacific journal of social sciences,Vol.I(1), Jan-June 2009,P 142-155. 31. Rajesekhar, P.V. (2006). Bhoomi An e-Conveyancing system for Karnataka State India, GIM International , 20(11) 32. Ranga Rao .V (2011). Collaborative Government to Employee (G2E): Issues and Challenges to EGovernment, Journal of EGovernance , P 214229,,IOS Press 33. Ranga Rao, (2008) Personal Information Integration in e-Government, Available at : 34. http://egov.eletsonline.com/2008/11/personal-information-integration-in-e-government/ , Accessed August 20, 2012 . 35. Report of the Working Group on Information Technology Sector Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012 17), Available at http://planningcommission.nic.in/aboutus/committee/wrkgrp12/cit/wgrep_dit.pdf, Accessed June 15, 2012 36. Reynolds, M and Regio, M. (2001) E-government as a Catalyst in the Information Age, Microsoft EGovernment Initiatives, In EGovernment. Available at : http://www.netcaucus.org/books/egov2001/., Accessed September 12, 2012 . 37. Remenyi, D, (1999) , IT Investment making a business case, Oxford: Butterworth Heineman. 38. RCOCLR (2005), Report of Committee On Computerisation of Land Records ,. Available at : 39. ,http://dolr.nic.in/dolr/downloads/pdfs/land0001.pdf, Accessed August 5, 2012 40. Ross, J., C. Beath, et al. (1996). "Develop long-term competitiveness through IT assets." Sloan Management Review 38(1): 31-45 41. Sarantis ,D., Askounis,D., & Smithson,S.(2009),Critical appraisal on project management approaches in e-Government 42. Satyanarayna. J. E-government, the science of the possible, Page 270-71 43. SARC(2008). Second Administrative reforms Commission , Available at :http://darpg.nic.in/darpgwebsite_cms/Document/file/promoting_egov11.pdf, Accessed November 5, 2102. 44. Sharifi, H. & Zarel, B. (2004). An adaptive approach for implementing e-government I.R. Iran, Journal of Government Information. 45. Shirin Madon (2004) Evaluating the developmental impact of E-Goverance initiatives an exploratory Frame work., , Available at http://www.ejisdc.org/ojs2/index.php/ejisdc/article/viewFile/123/123, Accessed August 20, 2102. 46. Spoeher, John., Burger, Anne., & Barrett, Steven. (2007). The Shared Services Experience, Report 2: Lessons from Australia. 47. Commissioned by the Public Service Association of SA. The Australian Institute for Social Research 115

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48. Subhash Bhatnagar (2009), Unlocking E-Government Potential, Concepts, Cases and Practical Insights,SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd 49. TCS white paper on ,Towards an ideal e-Governance scenario in India,, Available At http://ww.tcs.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/White%20Papers/tcs_government_idealegovernanceindi a.pdf, visited on 12.11.2012, Accessed October 5, 2012. 50. UNAPCICIT,(2012) .United Nations Asian and Pacific Training Centre for Information and Communication Technology for 51. Development (APCICT, 2012), e-Government Applications, Available at : http://unapcict.org/ecohub/briefing-note-series/BN3.pdf, Accessed September 9 10 , 2012. 52. UN, (2012), The United Nations E-Government Survey 2012,Available at http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan048065.pdf, Accessed August 10 , 2102. 53. Walsham., G., Robey, D. and Sahey, S. (2007) Special Issue on Information Systems in Developing Countries, MIS Quarterly, 31, 2,317-326. 54. World Bank (2009a). Roots for Good Forest Outcomes: An Analytical Framework for Governance Reforms. Washington, DC: World Bank. Available at http://www.ictinagriculture.org/ictinag/sites/ictinagriculture.org/files/final_Module15.pdf, Accessed October 10,2102 14.10.2012. 55. Zuboff, S. (1988), In the age of smart machine, New York :Basic Books. About Author: Dr. Velamala Ranga Rao obtained his Ph.D in Statistics (1994) from Andhra University and M.Tech in Information Technology (2011) from Karnataka State Open University, Mysore, India. Currently he is working as a Computer Programmer at Soil and Land Use Survey of India, Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India, Delhi. His research papers have appeared in International Journals, Book reviews and Conference Proceedings. He is having 20 years of experience in field of Information Technology in the Government Sector. His primary research interests focus on Collaborative E-Government services, Data warehousing, Data mining and Text mining.

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Necessity of Quality Assurance in e-Governance Projects

Pabitrananda Patnaik 1 , Susanta Kumar Panda1 and Manas Ranjan 2 ABSTRACT The term Quality is felt and understood by everybody, but, it is too difficult in implementing in a system. In Software Engineering, Quality Assurance is a valuable discipline and many standards are also available for it, but, using those standards for creating confidence in the customers mind is not easy. The e-Governance applications in which software has an important role has the problem of quality assurance to make it successful. In general, quality assurance in software development is felt like an extra voluminous and highly documentary activity to the software development team and of no use to the customer. Therefore, in this paper, the need of Quality Assurance is discussed to create confidence in user and building a robust application with reducing chances of errors. The e-Counselling project of Odisha government is taken into discussion as it is one of the major e-Governance applications in the state and is being implemented since 2010 crossing lot of hurdle points. During these three years of application it has reached to a level where the confidence of user, public and institutions is high. Further, in this paper, the quality assurance metrics is focused, that is the Analyst-DeveloperUser-Manager model to ensure quality for making the application matured enough to meet the user requirements. The Analyst, Developer, User and Manager do not require to do much extra work or documentation to maintain quality, but, they have to execute the work in a well defined manner to achieve success in implementing and maintaining eGovernance applications. Keywords: Quality Assurance, e-Governance, e-Counselling, National Informatics Centre (NIC). 1. Introduction The software quality assurance is something, that is thought of after the software is developed. During the development phase, focus always remains on the output of the software. With tightly time schedule, cost and insufficient skill set, there are chances of error occurrence in the software, and these errors are found out almost after the software is developed and implemented. The characteristics of software such as invisibility, complexity and flexibility forces the developers to make changes even after the software is implemented. These type of activities involved in the development of software makes it paralysed or semi paralysed and consequently, the software remains unused or partially used. Therefore, instead of checking the output, if it is followed at every input stages of the software life cycle, the chances of error occurrence would be minimal. In the present scenario, generally the quality aspects are applied to the software after the software is developed. Apparently, the quality implications becomes a voluminous documentary work to the development team. The participation and observation regarding the quality by the user is very less. The user does not take any interest to know about the quality standards followed during the development stages. They merely see the outputs of the software and this type of system development reaches a stage where the software becomes no more useful. The Quality Assurance (QA) techniques have been applied for many years in manufacturing industries. In most of the manufacturing industries, Quality Control departments function for measuring the quality at different stages of the product and finally certify it. But, in the case of the application software, it is not
1

National Informatics Centre, India *Corresponding Author: (Email: ppabitra@hotmail.com) 2 Berhampur University, India

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possible as the requirement varies from application to application. Initially there were no such departments to measure the quality standards followed by the developing teams. Now, this area is focused and many software industries follow standards to maintain quality. These standards are generally used for the document formats and guidelines. The involvement of stake holders at different stages is hardly taken into account. The requirements understood by the analyst and mentioned in the document of Software Requirement Specification (SRS) is not clearly understood to others even within the team. Even, the person who prepares the SRS may not have clearly understood the requirements of the users. On the other side, the user may not have given its requirements very clearly to the analyst. In addition to improper understanding, the insufficient skill set, rapid changes in technologies and other factors also affect the output of the software and it deviates from the actual requirement of the user. The famous author Roger S. Pressmen has mentioned in his book of Software Engineering that, a wag once said every program does something right, it just may not be the thing that we want to do. Hence, even a jaded software developer will also agree that, high quality software is an important goal. Quality Assurance is an umbrella activity and that is required to be applied throughout the life cycle of software engineering process[17][18][20]. 1.1 National Informatics Centre (NIC) Presently, we live in the age of the Information Technology (IT) revolution. The power of IT to transform and accelerate the development process, especially in developing economies is universally accepted without any questions. Since the decade of eighties, NIC, under the Department of Electronics and Information Technology of the Government of India, is playing an active role for promotion and implementation of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions in the government. It has taken leading role for taking the eGovernance drive in the country for the last four decades by building a strong foundation for better and more transparent governance and assisting the governments endeavor to reach the unreached. NIC has implemented e-Governance applications in different sectors of Government of India and played a catalyst role in socio-economic development of the country. The best practices, state-of-the-art technology and competent man power of NIC has helped to develop and implement applications for good governance and it has helped the government to make refinement in many activities related to the government[10][21]. 1.2 e-Counselling Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE) of Govt. of Odisha is responsible for producing quality technical and professional manpower in the field of Engineering, Pharmacy, Information Technology, Management and Medicine through All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) approved Govt./ Aided/ Self Financeing Institutions/ Universities. The norms and guidelines of AICTE are being followed. For this, it conducts an entrance test, popularly known as OJEE for the aspirants to take admission in BE/ B.Tech/ Pharmacy/ MBA/ MCA/ MBBS/ BDS/ Architecture. Till the year 2010, centralized counseling was being conducted for admission which was very cumbersome process. So, with the advance of ICT in the state of Odisha, the State Govt. took a step to implement e-Counselling for less movement of candidates and better monitoring of the transparent system[8][9]. This paper takes the challenging job executed by NIC in the year 2010 onwards for implementing eCounselling project in Odisha, and finds the necessity of quality assurance for e-Governance applications to make the system accurate, robust and transparent to the public. In e-Governance projects, the software is generally a bespoke software in which the requirement of the user is studied and finalised and then the software is either customised or newly developed. From the cost point of view, the software cost of e-Governance project is very less in comparison to the total project cost but it is the main part without which the whole project would fail. The success of the software leads 118

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much way ahead for succeeding the e-Governance projects. In this paper, the e-Counselling software for Degree courses for Engineering, Medical, Pharmacy, MBA and MCA is considered and its analysis for the admission year of 2010 to 2012 is done for verifying the issues and challenges in project management in the field of e-Governance. The e-counselling software provides the web based service to all the entrance qualified candidates to register themselves, submitting their choices and allotting the seats to the candidates following the rules and regulations of Orissa government, its reservation policies and guidelines. The finally allotted candidates go to their institutions to take admission. All these activities are completed, maintaining the security and transparency of the services like G2C, G2G and G2B. This application software needs to be strictly time bound to deliver the output in time.

In Table 1, the tabular data contains e-counselling statistics for the Degree courses for which the candidates were allotted seats from different phases of multi round counselling. In 2012, the counselling was done to handle more than 1.5 lakhs of entrance qualified candidates for Degree and Post graduation courses. 2. Need of Quality Assurance for e-Governance Projects The e-Governance applications do not need only the software development, it also requires the quality of data, procedures, methods, security, reliability and availability etc. Software engineering provides different standards like ISO, SEI CMM levels, IEEE, Six Sigma etc., still these standards always do not ensure the quality of software products. Further, the users do not require, what type of quality standards was used in the software development, rather they focus on the output required and the input given is properly done or not. In addition to this, applying the quality ensuring functionalities require more time and voluminous documentations which goes beyond the deadline of the software.

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Quality issues Insufficient domain knowledge : Most of the times, the e-governance applications are developed without having sufficient domain knowledge of the developers. This creates the problem for the software to be implemented to meet the user requirements. Further, the e-Governance applications domain is not very much generalized, thus, it needs very clear knowledge of the developers in that domain.[7] Improper skilled personnel : Different softwares are developed in different platforms. Sometimes, the softwares are developed by semi skilled or unskilled people who may not have required skill set. This leads the failure of the softwares in long run.[7] Poor acquisition practices : It creates problems in acquiring the technology. Even the quality standards like CMMI levels also not always guaranteed that the software is a high quality product.[7]

Figure 1 : Different Quality aspects of e-Governance projects As discussed in figure 1, the quality need of e-Governance applications are divided into 4 stages such as Process Quality, Software Quality, Data Quality and Managerial Quality. 2.1 Process Quality The Process Quality is related to the understanding of the user requirement, framing of algorithm and logics of the system to be developed. In this stage, Analyst is involved and it is his responsibility to define all these parameters clearly and address them, so that the impact would be positive. 2.1.1 Process Quality Metrics - Requirement Analysis : The analysis of the software requirement is to be done. Most of the eGovernance applications are bespoke projects, so the requirements are finalised first, then the development activity is taken up. - Design & Development : Design & development of the system and algorithms for each program of the software.

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Project Management Plan : The Plan should be properly done, otherwise the resources can not be used properly. Skillset : The skillset of Analyst and Developers is essential for succeeding the project Implementation Strategy : The implementation strategy is to be designed during the stage of Process Quality. Maintenance Strategy : After implementation if any changes is required then that has to be focused from the 1st stage itself. The requirement changes needed in the system has to be planned from the initial stage itself. Capacity Building : Training and workshops to be done for handling the software[11][12].

2.2 Software Quality Software quality lies with the understanding of the requirement by the Analyst and Developer. The people involved in software development should have both technical and domain knowledge, so that, the error would be lesser. To make a software error free rigorous testing is required. 2.2.1 Testing of Software Software testing is done by using the test cases. In e-Counselling, the test cases are prepared and the software is tested for each such test case. The test cases are prepared for the candidates according to their choices given and the reservation categories they have. The number of test cases are derived using Binomial function. Binomial Function

Similarly, for each of Non-Resident Indians(NRI), outlying Oriya tract (OL) and outside state (OS) candidates, the number of test cases is 3. Therefore, total test cases for seat allotment is 4195 + 9 = 4204. The different Software Quality Metrics associated at this stage are as described below. 2.2.2 Software Quality Metrics - Correctness : The extent to which the software satisfies the user requirement = (No. of requirements fulfilled) / (Total no. of requirements) * 100 121

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Reliability : The extent to which the software can function without failure = (Mean Time to Failure) / (Total Run Time) * 100 Efficiency : The output to given input = (Space or time usage) / (Total Space or Time) * 100 Integrity : Extent to which the software can ensure accuracy and consistency = (No. of successful attempts) / (Total no. of attempts) * 100 Usability : Efforts required to operate the software = (Total time taken to handle the software) / (Total development time) * 100 Maintainability : The efforts required to trace and fix the error = (Time taken to fix the error) / (Total development time) * 100 Testability : The efforts required to test the software with all its functionalities = (Time taken for testing the functionality) / (Total development time) * 100 Flexibility : The efforts required for modifying an operational software = (Time taken to modify the program) / (Total development time) * 100 Portability : Transferability of the software from one environment to another = (No. of successful ports) / (Total no. of ports) * 100 Reusability : The degree to which the software programs can be reused in other applications = (No. of reusable functions) / (Total no. of functions) * 100 Interoperability : The efforts required to couple the components of one software with another = (Time required for coupling) / (Installation Time) * 100 [11][12].

2.3 Data Quality Data Quality is one of the major components for successful implementation of the project. The user sees the output and judges the utility of software. If the input data is wrong then the output is obviously wrong. In case of e-Counselling, the data correction was about 40%. Particularly, the data relating to processing should be 100% error free in case of e-Counselling application. Once a seat is allotted to someone wrongly, then all other candidates after that candidate gets the erroneous allotment. Therefore, it is not possible to reallot the particular candidate without affecting other candidates. The different metrics pertaining to data quality are described below. 2.3.1 Data Quality Metrics - Accuracy : The data must be accurately supplied to the software. - Completeness : Partial filling the data will not be used. It must be complete before running the software. - Update Status : The data update status is to be maintained. - Relevance : The relevant data is to be used. - Consistence : Data should be consistent. - Reliability : Data should be supplied or updated by reliable sources and it needs to be certified by the user. - Presentation : The data should be presented properly in the output. - Accessibility : Data access must be given to the authorised users only. 2.4 Managerial Quality The success of the project depends on the Project Manager and User Manager who handles the data. For e-Governance applications, there are different stake holders involved in a project. In e-Counselling, the stakeholders are State Government, Institutions, Vendors, Developers, Media and the Citizens. Therefore, their skill, knowledge, ethics, responsibility and mentality is related to the success of the project. Some of the qualitative metrics with respect to managerial quality are discussed below.

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2.4.1 Managerial Quality Metrics - Defects Handling : If error comes in the output, how it needs to be handled. - Time Management : If the project is not delivered in time then the situation is critical. It needs to be managed properly. - Cost Management : Over cost of the project. - Change Management : Ability to handle the changes. - Manpower Management : Putting right person in right job. Risk Management : Ability of the manager to handle the risk. Ethics of the Stake Holders : The attitude, mentality and ethics of the stake holders impact the project output. So the managers should have the focus on it.

3. Risk Management and Quality A risk is an event or situation that would badly affect the software projects during development or implementation or at any other stages of project life cycle. It is the latent or hidden factor that affects the productivity. The objective of the risk management is to control or limit the likelihood of something bad to the software project. Therefore, it should be the practice of project managers to forecast the risk factors in advance and take necessary controlling and corrective measures well in advance, so that, the project would not suffer during its life time. The impact of risk is directly linked with quality.

Figure 2 Error & Quality graph with time In figure 2, it is observed that, the errors are reduced with time and quality increases with the fixed or little changes in user requirements. In e-Counselling project, the problems faced in 2010 is highly reduced in 2012. Now, the software is more than 95% stable. Different stake holders involved in this project have accepted this application with changes in mind set and acquaintance with the system. The key findings of this paper are

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At different stages of the life cycle, quality should be followed. It is found that, it is an AnalystDeveloper-User-Manager model of quality assurance for e-Governance applications. So, clearly identify the qualitative and quantitative issues at different stages and address them in time, so their impact would not harm the project output. The e-governance projects are bespoke projects, so the user requirement should be clearly defined. The requirement should not be changed very frequently. This is the process quality. In eCounselling project, the basic process is almost same, but, there is certainly some changes in the requirement of state govt. These changes have been accommodated in time and tested thoroughly. In figure 2, it is clearly shown that, quality and error are inversely proportional. When quality is less, errors are high and vice versa. Therefore, it is obvious that, quality systems must be followed at every stage of the project life cycle. Standardised methodologies and approaches should be followed as mentioned in software quality phase. Following standards must reduce the error occurrence in the system. Risk Management is also an approach to reduce the error and succeeding the application. Therefore, risk identification, prioritization and management should be done. Focus on best practices of e-Governance projects. Interoperability of e-Governance projects and programmed management should be emphasised.

5. Conclusion The basic need of quality is felt by everybody, but, it is failed due to many reasons like speedy delivery of output, complexity and sensitiveness of the project. Of course, the Project Management teams focus on quality management aspects of the projects, still it gets neglected and consequently, its absence is felt at later stages where the scope of accommodating this aspect is very less. The e-Governance applications are increasing day to day, and, government is also focusing on interoperability and e-Governance standardisation for better results of e-Governance projects. There are numerous quality standards available in software engineering like ISO, IEEE, Six Sigma, SEI CMM and so on. All these are applicable to e-Governance, but, none of these models is 100% suitable to such applications. The user does not get involved in such standards and only focuses on error free output of the software. Therefore, the necessity of Quality Assurance suggested in this paper is the efforts already being done for execution of e-Governance applications. These efforts are to be used in more polished way to get the maximum benefit for the users as well as to the developers. For a standard e-Governance project like e-Counselling with average complexity, normal volume of work and highly sensitive project would require around 4 years to come to a stable stage. In the 1st year, the core requirement is focused for error free output. In the 2nd year all the allied activities could be emphasised and in the 3rd year all refinement and optimisation would be carried out. From 4th year onwards, the application will be stable and can continue in full fledge for a longer period. Quality Management is essentially required for implementing such projects successfully. 6. Acknowledgements We are thankful to National Informatics Centre which is a premier and successful organization in developing and implementing e-Governance application in India. Further, we are thankful to Odisha Joint Entrance Examination and other web site originators for their valuable information in the website.

Rferences 1. Aggarwal K.K.,Singh Y., Software Engineering, New Age International Publishers, Third Edition, Pages 317-357 2. Baker Emanuel R., Which Way, SQA?, 2001, IEEE 3. Gaffney J.E.,Metrics In Software Quality Assurance, Jr. ACM '81, November 9-11, 1!)81 4. Goel B.S., Production Operations Management, Pragati Prakashan, Eleventh Edition, Pages 150-198 124

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5. Gordon G., System Simulation, Prentice Hall of India, Second Edition, Pages 38-52 6. Gustafson G.G. Kerr Roberta J.,Some Practical Experience with a Software Quality Assurance Program, January 1982 Volume 25 Number 1 7. http://egovstandards.gov.in/ 8. http://odishajee.com/ 9. http://ojee.nic.in/ 10. http://www.nic.in 11. http://www.qasigma.com/2008/12/how-to-calculate-software-quality-attributes.html 12. http://www.scribd.com/doc/70801598/How-to-Calculate-Software-Quality-Attributes 13. Hughes B.,Cotterell M.(2001), Software Project Management, Tata McGraw-Hill, Second Edition, Pages 235-259 14. IEEE Guide for Software Quality Assurance Planning, IEEE Std 730.1-1995 (Revision and redesignation of IEEE Std 983-1986) 15. IEEE Standard for Software Quality Assurance Plans, IEEE Std 730-1998 (Revision of IEEE Std 730-1989) 16. Ojha A., E-Governance in Practice, GIFT Publishing, Pages 33-41 17. Pressman Roger S.(1992),Software Engineering, A Practitioners Approach, McGraw Hill International Editions. Pages 46-52,549-594 18. Sommerville I., Software Engineering, Pearson, Eighth Edition, Pages 128-137 19. Thompson J Barrie and Edwards Helen M, How to Teach Practical Software Quality Assurance An Experience Report, IEEE 2000 20. Voas Jeffrey, Assuring Software Quality Assurance, Cigital, 2003, IEEE 21. www.mit.gov.in 22. Xenos Michalis, Software Metrics and Measurements, In Encyclopedia of E-Commerce, EGovernment and Mobile Commerce, Mehdi Khosrow-Pour (Ed.), Idea Group Publishing, ISBN: 159140-799-0, pp. 1029-1036, 2006. About the Authors Pabitrananda Patnaik, Scientist-E (Technical Director), NIC, has obtained his MCA from National Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur and then he has completed MBA(Finance). He is having more than 20 years of working experience in the field of IT. Since last 18 years, he is working with National Informatics Centre and have handled many e-Governance projects. He is involved in software analysis, design, development, implementation and maintenance of e-Governance projects in the state of Odisha. He has research interest in Software Engineering, Software Project Management and Software Quality Assurance of e-Governance projects. Susanta Kumar Panda, Scientist-F (Sr. Technical Director), NIC, has obtained his M.Tech. from IIT, Kharagpur and having more than 27 years of working experience in the field of IT and ITES. Since last 15 years, he is leading the IT services in Odisha as State Informatics Officer of NIC. He has handled good number of projects on e-Governance applications, Networking Infrastructure and IT Services. His research interest is Software Engineering, Project Management and Quality Services in the field of IT. Manas Ranjan Patra holds a Ph.D. Degree in Computer Science from the Central University of Hyderabad, India. Currently he is heading the Post Graduate Department of Computer Science, Berhampur University. He has about 26 years of experience in teaching and research in different areas of Computer Science. He had visiting assignment to International Institute for Software Technology, Macao as a United Nations Fellow and for sometime worked as assistant professor in the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology, Hyderabad. He has more than 75 international and national publications to his credit. His research interests include Service Oriented Computing, Software Engineering, Applications of Data mining and E-Governance. He has presented papers, chaired technical sessions and served in the technical committees of many International conferences. 125

Assessment of Universities portals in Haryana

Subhash Chander Jaglan 1 *, Ashwani Kush 2 and Sharmila Devi Jaglan 3 ABSTRACT The Modern world is going to be digital each day. Use of Information & Communication Technology (ICT) by various departments in private, public and Government sectors have increased a lot. A number of website and portals are being designed and implemented by various Academic institutions. These portals help users a lot in knowing status and any other details regarding the institution. But while implementing such portals certain vulnerabilities exist in the portals and security and assets available on the portal are at stake. Assets at such portals may be various databases, email addresses and many more. Various new applications of ICT are appearing day by day but with increase in security breaching. In this paper certain metrics for assessment & Vulnerabilities of two portals of Universities in Haryana have been taken into consideration and certain security tips have been provided. Certain precautions may help to reduce dangers of data loss. Certain assessment metrics of both the portals have also been taken into consideration in detail. Keywords: E-Governance, Assessment, Portal, ICT, Vulnerability 1. Introduction Earlier data about individuals or organizations was maintained as paper records. In modern era computer files are used that can be easily accessed by large number of people. More companies & Governments store business and individual information on computer than ever before. During the last couple of years, implementation of e-governance projects by various central, state government entities and Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) has gained momentum [Sahu G.P. et.al. (2010)]. Many large businesses are solely dependent on information stored in computers. Through communication network (including LAN, MAN,WAN) various information systems are interconnected and therefore chances of unauthorized access, abuse, fraud increase manifold because of many access points. Obviously when data is stored in electronic form then it is more vulnerable as compared to the data in manual form. In case of egovernment security and diminishing vulnerability on web portals has a vital role to play. Computer Security & Vulnerability Assessment is being stressed for research and this also makes sense in a world where E-Governance is becoming the norms of the day. Online information and systems, Along with their potential for making life easier and smarter for people, also carry with them the danger of insecurity. Enhancing security, privacy and trust deserves top priority in e-government. Strategies and efforts need to include a large variety of measures and principles such as purpose specification, security safeguards, accountability, encouraging the use of privacy enhancing technologies and quality certificates [Georg Aichholzer, 2004]. Identities are very valuable and are more prone to misuse. It is therefore very important that they are protected and made accessible only to authorized persons. At the same time, people want to use their various digital devices to access information. Various E-Governance projects are being implemented but security is not given its due. Various authorities have understood the significance of IT and its role in reaching out to people in implementing various beneficial schemes and policies today.
1

Govt. P.G. College, Sec-14, Karnal, Haryana, India *Corresponding Author: (Email: subhashjg@rediffmail.com) 2 University college, Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra, India
3

Doon Valley Institute of education ,karnal, Haryana, India

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In this deep sea of cyber world, the wave of E-Governance will not have a smooth sailing without security ahead in time. Security is mainly about the provision of core security services. Service confidentiality is about keeping data secret. An Integrity service prevents data from being altered in an unauthorized way. Entity authentication is a process whereby one entity is assured of the identity of another entity. Data origin authentication is assurance that data came from its reputed source. Availability is the property of being accessible and usable upon demand by an authorized entity [Sharma yogesh K, Bagla A.,2009)]. Information security is the process of protecting information. It protects its availability, privacy and integrity. Section 2 of the paper gives certain details of the related work and choice of the portals , sections 3 gives details of the Metrics taken into consideration for assessment, section 4 gives results and discussions and section 5 is the conclusion of the paper. 2. Related work & Choice of the portals Various WebPages maintained by an organization or individual is called website [Laudon Kenneth C. & Laudon Jane P. (2006)]. These web pages contain text, graphics, animation, sound & video and are linked electronically to other pages regardless if the location of the computer. This has been possible only due to the advent of Internet. Internet has placed a transformational effect on society. Internet and other ICT tools have opened a new medium of communication for individuals and businesses and provided opportunities to communicate and get information in an entirely different way. It has made information and services accessible in ways that could not have been conceived just two decades ago. Internet growth was initially due to private sector interests but governments are now becoming part of this revolution. Governments worldwide have been making significant attempts to make their services and information available on the Internet [Kumar V, Mukerji B, Butt I and Persaud A (2007)]. All Governments are digitizing its data. Governments across the world hold terabytes of information personal and country-specific confidential information. This information in digital format today is more vulnerable to threats than ever before [cybermedia News, (2011)]. Today all state governments are busy in implementing National E-Governance Plan (NeGP) and on the other side process of Unique Identification Numbers (UIDs) is going on side by side. In this scenario the role of Vulnerability assessment of various portals has increased manifold. Securing data is a side by side process for proper functioning of various E-Governance projects. A portal is s broader term than website. Rather a portal is a gateway to enter into sea of information for clients of an organization and for general public for an e-governance portal. Portal provides services like search engine, email, latest news on the main page id the portal. Portal can play the role in making the department known to its users or citizens. Citizens want to avail services from the portal need not know the intricacies involved in the processes. They also need not know about the service providers. Studies for assessing of various portals and e-governance is being done every year by Computer society Of India (CSI) and various awards are being provided to the best projects at centre, state and district levels. For this Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used. AHP is a structured technique for dealing with complex decisions [ Sahu G.P et.al.(2010)]. Traditionally one has to visit an office for any govt. or business service. But now with the emergence of Information Communication Technology (ICT) it is possible to locate service centers closer to the citizens. E-Governance is composed of IT, people and governments. It is an application of electronic means to improve interaction between Government and citizens; and to increase the administrative effectiveness and efficiency in the internal Government operations [Ramadoss B,R. Palanisamy ,2002]. It is application of IT to the Government processes to bring Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsive and Transparent (SMART) Governance [Ramadoss B,R. Palanisamy ,2002]. It is not only just computerization of services but also reinventing the new ways of governance. Advent of Internet Technology has changed the traditional Government to E-Government. Such a Government would bring transparency; check on corruption if it is implemented successfully. E-Government is a technology led administration where citizen can avail government services like getting a copy of land records, tax return filing, various types of certificates whereas E-Governance involves formulation of laws and regulations such as domain name to govern cyber space [Gupta M.P,Kumar P,Bhattachrya J. ,2004]. Haryana has a 127

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glorious history going as far back as the Vedic Age. The State was the home of the legendary Bharata dynasty, from which the country derived its name Bharat. Vedas were written here; Lord Krishna delivered the famous Bhagwad-Gita sermon in the midst of Mahabharata War; and on this very land, Ved Vyas wrote the epic Mahabharata in Sanskrit. Haryana is one of the smaller states of Indian Union with only 1.37% area (44212 Sq Km) and 2.09 % population (around 253 lacs) of India. Haryana is one the front ranking states in the arena of the Information Technology revolution in India. In Haryana these citizen centric services are provided through Electronic Delivery of Integrated Services of Haryana to All (e-DISHA) and also through state government web portal. E-DISHA is Single window service delivery to Citizen and major emphasis is on the G2C information and transactional services based on a self sustainable model. This portal has received 2nd runners-up best e-Governance project award, awarded by computer society of India (CSI). In the future all G2C services will be covered under e-DISHA. The state government wants to make Haryana in the category of leaders by the use of an ICT and e-Governance. Government of Haryana has taken a step for the time Bound delivery of 15 Services (36 Sub-Services) which are provided by the 7 Departments namely Food and supply, Revenue, transport, Power, Public Health and Engineering ,Health and MCs , MCs and HUDA of Government. On the same lines Haryana Government is also providing certain e-governance portals related with the education. Primary, secondary and Higher departments of Education in Haryana have their own websites to be utilized by the general public. In education sector, Haryana has many Universities namely Kurukshetra University Kurukshetra (KUK), Mahrishi Dayanand University (MDU), Guru Jambheshwar Univesity , Chaudhry Devi Lal University for providing Higher Education in Haryana. For agriculture research and Education Haryana Agriculture University is available at Hisar with its extension centres at different places in Haryana. For Technical educatioin, certain Universities like YMCA and Chhotu Ram University at Murthal, and Womens University at Sonepat also exist. Certain private Universities are also functioning in the state. For getting admissions it is the duty of the parents to look for the best among all of these universities. But visiting all of the universities is atypical job and portals designed by all such universities are utilized by the parents to get admission of their awards in the universities. KUK being the oldest University and MDU on the second oldest University is being taken account for the assessment of their portals on certain Metrics. Portal of KUK is designed and maintained bt Shalimar Infonet (P) Ltd. Chandigarh. MDU portal is powered by NYSA Communications Pvt. Ltd. The Kurukshetra University was established in 1956 as a residential University and its foundation stone was laid by late Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the first President of India. It is located in the holy city of Kurukshetra, land of the historical battle of 'Mahabharata' and the great message of Bhagwad Gita, its campus is situated on the western bank of Brahm Sarover (the holy tank) and extends over an area of over 400 acres. It started with only the Department of Sanskrit, and it has grown now into a multi-faculty University as one of the premier centres for advanced study and research in the region. The National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), Bangalore has bestowed A Grade status on this University. IT has 45 Teaching departments and 430 affiliated colleges. Directorate of Distance Education was started by University as directorate of Correspondence courses in 1976. Its main aim was to provide education to those who could not continue their studies due to social reasons or due to limited number of seats in regular courses. The department has a separate three storey building exclusively for distance education. Directorate has introduced Radio Broadcast lecture series Gyan Sanchar from All India Radio (AIR), Kurukshetra. Directorate has setup audio video lab and Satellite Interacive Terminal (SIT) for receiving programmes from EDUSAT and IGNOU national beam. Beginning with courses of Pre University and B.A. with about 400 students in 1976 the Directorate now enrols every year about 35000 students in 36 courses of different subjects and streams. Maharshi Dayanand University, ab initio established as Rohtak University, Rohtak, came into existence by an Act No. 25 of 1975 of the Haryana Legislative Assembly in 1976. Its objective was to promote interdisciplinary higher education and research in the fields of environmental, ecological and life sciences. It was rechristened as Maharshi Dayanand University in 1977 after the name of a great visionary and social reformer, Maharshi Dayanand. It had a unitary and residential character in its nascent stage, but became an affiliating University in November 1978. The University secured the recognition of University Grants Commission the higher education regulatory body of India - for central Govt. grants in Feb. 1983. The 128

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University campus, spread over an area of over 665.44 acres, is well laid with state-of-the-art buildings and magnificent road network, and presents a spectacle of harmony in architecture and natural beauty. Educational and research programmes are offered through its 36 departments. Distance Education is an established and recognized mode of education in the modern age. Keeping up with the spirit of Open University system and in the view of long-standing demand of heterogeneous groups of student's community, the Directorate of Distance Education (DDE) of Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak (MDU), has started a wide spectrum of courses. Over the years, DDE has expanded tremendously in terms of programmes, enrolment and study centres. Through 40 programmes, DDE is imparting education to more than 1,27,000 students through its study centers. Both Universities are accredited by NAAC and providing similar type of courses. Their home pages are shown in figures 1 and 2 respectively.

Figure 1: Home page of KUK Portal

Figure 2. Home page of MDU portal

3. Metrics for assessment of portals E-Governance is application of IT to the processes of Government functioning to bring out responsible, responsive, efficient and transparent governance. E-Governance refers to the use of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and accountability to government [Gupta D.N., 2008]. Initially, e-Governance may seem like another option for communication with citizens. But in the face of rising demands from demographic, economic, social, and global trends, e-Government no longer appears to be a matter of choice, but a necessity for any country wishing to enter the 21st century as a competitive nation in the world arena. Governments have been viewed as complex, mammoth bureaucratic establishments with a set of information silos that erect barriers to the access of information and make the provision of services cumbersome and frustrating. With e-Government, the quality of services provided to citizens and businesses can be improved significantly while attaining greater efficiency for all participants [Kumar V, Mukerji B, Butt I and Persaud A (2007)]. Home page of every portal has an important role to play for assessment by users. Frequently asked questions (FAQs) must be available on home page so that users may have complete information about the portal and its services. A complete list of all the metrics taken into consideration are shown here in table 1 below. Certain scale from 1-10 has been used for assessment of these portals. If a particular service is necessary for the citizens and is available then on the benchmarking scale will be given high value7-9 otherwise if not necessary from the citizen point of view or it unavailable on portal or if overall particular feature is not available then it is assigned the weight 1-3. Minimum scale used is 1 and maximum scale used is 9. 129

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Availability of Running latest Pull down menu news Contact us Citizen Traffic Analysis participation Table1. Metrics for assessment of University Portals On the basis of the Metrics mentioned in table 1 & scale detail here as follows. -

Home page

Broken links Vulnerability alerts

Font size & language option Timeliness and relevance

above both the portals have been analysed in

Home page: Home page of MDU portal contains all important information regarding courses offered, duration of the various courses, eligibility for admission, admission procedure, counseling schedule, fee structure, rules and regulations, teaching faculty, and library and other support services, will provide answers to all your questions about the University. For more information or need any clarification, one can contact the persons at Call Centre through helpline numbers given on this website. Whereas KUK portal has no such help line numbers and has certain links to for any information. Moreover MDU portal is much better from KUK portal as there is lack of Contact us, site map and archives. KUK portal is having search facility which is not directly available on the MDU portal. On the assessment scale KUK portal is assigned weight 3 whereas MDU portal has been assigned as weight 8. Availability of Pull down menu Feature of pull down menu is not available on KUK portal while MDU portal has availed the feature for maximum utilization of space on the home page and for the ease of its users. Users can know about particular information at the portal easily with the help of this feature. This feature helps in providing a lot of information in less space comparatively. Feature suggests if one rolls mouse over a particular option he may get a list of all options available under that heading so that one may open the desired link. It is good feature and must be incorporated as it makes the front end spacious and hence increases information readability. Users will be able to easily access the services available on the portals. MDU portal has also provided option of other websites in case non functioning whereas KUK portal is lacking on this part. On the basis of scale criteria MDU portal has been awarded 8 and KUK portal 3 on the 10 point scale. Snapshot showing such features are shown below in figure 3. Running news or text on the portal: Both the portals being citizen centric must take care of the seasonal requirements and non seasonal requirements of its citizens. Such information can be provided in a news column which is available at both of these portals. News or latest happening has been shown in this column. The basic hardware and software requirement for getting information from these portals can be displayed in such columns so that users may be well prepared before using service on any of these portals. MDU portal has more relevant information under such texts. It includes the helpline numbers, separate announcement column and latest news. KUK portal has only one running text under heading latest news/events. On the whole MDU portal is more dynamic as compared to the KUK portal and can be confirmed from the home page of both the portals. Hence MDU portal has been awarded 9 whereas KUK portal has been awarded 3 on the scale. Broken link A broken link is any link that should take you at a document, image or web page that actually results an error. That particular page was linked from the website but is inaccessible. In a way it can be said that resources are not maximum utilized if there are more broken links on a portal. More broken links on a portal also dissuade the users to use the portal. Broken links create problems in proper navigation of the portals. KUK portal 5broken links whereas MDU portal has 158 broken links. As per report of 130

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the vulnerability scan of both the portals MDU portal has maximum number of alerts under the category of broken links. It has found 158 broken links out of the total 195 alerts. On this metric KUK portal has been awarded 8 and MDU portal is awarded 2 on the scale. Font size and language option Being citizen centric service portal special care must be taken for font size and other language (like Hindi) option at the portals for having guaranteed accessibility. Both of these portals namely MDU and KUK have no place for such facilities. Portals must give equal opportunity for accessing its contents. It should have certain provision so that handicapped people may be able to utilize it. Font size increase/ decrease facility also helps in accessibility of the websites but both of the portals lack on this feature. Various web standards implementation has ensured that website remains accessible to all, and meets Government standards. But still both the portals require that web portals be maintained in such a way that even hearing, visual and physical impaired persons may utilize the utility from such portals. On the scale both the portals are equal. Contact us In case of any difficulty in accessing the information from portal by students, teachers and others there is no option left with the users except adopting the other traditional mediums to perform the job. One will have to contact the concerned department telephonically and for that there is need of proper phone numbers of concerned officials on the website. If information is available but not up to date then citizens have to wait for a lot of time which again leads them to the other traditional ways of performing task. By having a look at the Contact us facility available on the portal confirms that MDU portal is much better than KUK portal. MDU portal is providing a long list of contacts to be utilized by the users of the portal. On the scale MDU portal is assigned weight 9 and KUK portal is assigned weight 3. Citizen participation Here it is seen whether portal provides opportunity for the users views regarding the portal and its working. Both the web portals do not provide this facility but MDU portal has given E-mail facility to interact with university authorities. Being citizen portal citizen participation is necessary requirements hence on the assessment scale MDU portal is assigned weight 7 and KUK portal is assigned weight 1. Traffic Analysis: Traffic analysis details about popularity of the portal among users .By analyzing it one can have idea about the problems faced and use of online services by various types of visitors. By having a look at the number of users of a portal one can decide about the factors deciding traffic. Traffic analysis facility must be available at each and every portal. Fortunately both the portals are having the account for number of visitors of the portals. The number of visitors at KUK portal since 20th September 2010 is 10595037 and MDU portal (since 2011) is 8097717 as on November 6th, 2012. Hence on the scale MDU portal is assigned weight 3 and KUK portal is assigned weight 7. Vulnerability alerts An organization requires that WLAN must address must address three critical areas namely Data confidentiality and integrity, authentication and access control and intrusion detection and prevention. Due to increase in the wireless network many security threats have been raised that does not require any expertise and expensive equipment to launch an attack against an organization [Izhar Mohd, Shahid Mohd. & Singh V.R (2012)]. Vulnerability is basically a weakness, a hole in the application, OS or Protocol. Vulnerabilities are flaws generated by bugs in the code of the system [Maheta Kunjan, Chauhan Prashant & Chauhan Sandip (2012)]. Vulnerabilities may exist in the design, implementation and configuration. Vulnerabilities have five attributes namely fault, authentication, 131

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consequence, Tactic and severity. Some hackers are computer genius they attack big targets [Blamire ,2004]. Government information is no exception for that. Despite numerous studies in the areas of security and trust, to date there is a dearth of research that addresses the impact of security trust and security awareness on the prevalence of online activities [Chen Jim Q,Schmidt,Mark B,Phan Dien D et.al. , 2008]. For successful E-Governance application there is a need to build the trust of citizens in the system. There is strong need that all data and transactions of the citizens are secure. If a system takes care of security then only they can become addict to that system. When a citizen does any transaction with Government for getting any E-Governance, he may have to give a lot of personal and critical information, which can be misused by the private sector and anti-social elements. Thus, the citizen should be ensured that the information flow would pass through reliable channels and seamless network. Also there is need to identity and verify citizens requesting services before they access or use the services. Here digital signature & biometrics play an important role in delivery of such services. Other various security concerns for an E-Governance system may be Virus Attacks, Outside and Inside Attacks, impersonation, Denial of service attack, breach of anonymity and accountability, loss of monetary value etc. Data available on portals must be secure against unauthorized access. Virtual machines are growing due to their abilities to imitate hardware, share resources and allow multiple OS installations on the same machine. Virtualisation is not inherently unsecure, it is a technology that potentially has new vulnerabilities and requires restructuring of traditional security measures [ Bhardwaj Garima & Sharma Priyanka (2012)]. There must be various authentication, encryption and data management polishes so that data available on the portals can be managed properly. Portal is more secure if it is having less number of threats and vulnerabilities. For measuring the vulnerability of both the portals vulnerability scanner has been used and it has shown that KUK portal is more vulnerable is having 757 alerts including maximum 489 alerts of High level. MDU portal is having only 195 alerts and maximum alerts are of informational type. Hence on the scale MDU portal is assigned 9 and KUK portal is assigned 3. Vulnerability Comparison report snapshot is shown here in figure 4. This comparison clearly shows KUK portal is having high level vulnerabilities and MDU portal is having low level vulnerabilities.

Figure 3: Pull down menu facility at MDU portal KUK portal -

Figure 4 Vulnerability Comparison of MDU and

Timeliness and relevance Relevancy of the information means the information must be relevant and based on the number of the estimated and future users of the University portals. Hence certain information regarding the problems faced by such people must be given some place on the portals. KUK portal is also lacking on the information available on the MDU portal on its right corner.It can be verified by having a look 132

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on the figures 5 and 6. More relevant information is available on the MDU portal hence on the scale it has been awarded 7 as compared to 2 to KUK portal.

Figure 5: showing Contact us, Site map, FAQs, RTI etc. KUK Portal

Figure 6: showing only search option at the

4. Conclusion Both the portals MDU and KUK have been assessed on certain metrics. By having a look on the overall assessment, MDU Portal is much better than KUK portal and has scored 61 compared to 45 for KUK. There is need to reengineer the services which are provided online for its citizens by KUK. There is need to provide more information by KUK portal stakeholders to the citizens so that portal may gain more popularity. It should also provide help line numbers so that users may get solutions of their various queries while sitting at their homes instead of visiting the KUK campus. Such basic information can be contact number in case of non availability of service, date of last update of the portal, links to state and other universities web portals, directory and websites of various education departments website links must be available. There is a need to look on the vulnerabilities available on the portal. KUK portal is also lacking on the information available on the MDU portal on its right corner. MDU portal should have less number of broken links and search option facility. MDU portal is having Sitemap and FAQ as broken links on the portal. MDU is maintaining three websites and can be reached to one another via links available on each other. Such facilities help users to work even if one website is not working correctly. For distance related work it has separate website namely mdudde.net and for other online works it has mduonline.net, whereas KUK portal is also lacking on this part. MDU has been awarded with B++ grade by NAAC as compared to A grade KUK. On the whole MDU portal is much better as compared to KUK portals on the basis of considered metrics and in providing online services to the citizens and all stakeholders. Overall summary of the complete analysis is given below in table 2. Table 2 Summary of analysis of KUK and MDU portals Service No. and Name Weights Assigned ( Max=9 Min=1) KUK MDU 1.Home page 3 8 2.Availability of Pull down menu 3 8 3. Running latest news 3 9 4. Broken links 8 2 5. Font size & accessibility 5 5 6. Contact us 3 9 133

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7. Accuracy & relevancy of information 8. Traffic Analysis 9. Vulnerability alerts 10. Timeliness and relevance Total Scores

2 7 9 2 45

7 3 3 7 61

References 1. Available at www.mdurohtak.ac.in accessed on 6th November, 2012 2. Available at www.kuk.ac.in accessed on 6th November, 2012 3. Backhouse and Dhillon (1999), Working towards principles for information security management in the 21st century, a paper available at www.csrc.lse.ac.uk 4. Bhardwaj Garima & Sharma Priyanka (2012), Virtualization: An opportunity and a threat, Proceedings of 6th International Conference on advanced Computing & Communication Technology (ICACCT-2012). 3rd November, 2012, APIIT SD India, Panipat (Haryana) ISBN.: 978-93-82062-69-1 5. Chen Jim Q, Schmidt, Mark B,Phan Dien D et.al.(2008),E-commerce security threats: awareness, trust and practice International Journal of Information Systems and Change Management Volume 3, Issue 1 , pp.16-32 6. Cybermedia News (2011) E-Governance amidst cyber threats, Available at www.Ciol.com 7. Georg Aichholzer(2004), Scenerios of e-Government in 2010 and implications for strategy design Electronic journal of E-Government Volume2 issue 1, Pp 1-10, available at ejeg.com 8. Gupta D.N. (2008), E-Governance, A comprehensive framework century Publications, New Delhi 9. Gupta M.P, Kumar P,Bhattachrya J.(2004), Government Online opportunities and Challenges,Ch-1,TMH Publication. 10. Izhar Mohd,Shahid Mohd. & Singh V.R (2012), Network security vulnerabilities heading for malacious attack, Proceedinhs of 7th National conference,CTNGC-2012, 20th October 2012, Ghaziabad (U.P.) 11. Kumar V, Mukerji B, Butt I and Persaud A (2007) Factors for Successful e-Government Adoption: a Conceptual Framework The Electronic Journal of e-Government Volume 5 Issue 1, pp 63 - 76, available online at www.ejeg.com 12. Laudon Kenneth C. & Laudon Jane P. (2006), Management Information System, Ninth edition, second impression, Pearson Prentice Hall. 13. Maheta Kunjan, Chauhan Prashant & Chauhan Sandip (2012), Research on Information security and study of threats,vulnerabilities and attacks, Proceedings of 6th National conference, IndiaCom, BVICAM, New Delhi 14. Ramadoss B,R. Palanisamy (2002) Issues and Challenges in electronic Governance Planning a Concept paper 15. Sahu G.P.et.al. (2010), e-Governance projects assessment- using Analytical Hierarchial Process Methdology, , Chapter 3 in Gupta Piyush, Bagga R.K, Ayaluri Sridevi ,enablers of change: selected e-governance initiatives in India ,Pp 21-51, IUP Publications (Tripura) 16. Sharma Yogesh K, Bagla A.(2009),Security challenges for Swarm robotics International Journal of Information Technology and Knowledge Management, Volume 2 No.1 Pp 45-48.

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Challenges for Adoption of Secured Effective E-governance through Virtualization and Cloud Computing
Amit Joshi 1 * ABSTRACT Cloud computing is a combination of data and services builds on decades of research orientation in virtualization, distributed computing, utility computing, and more recently with advance networking, web based technologies and software services. A next big leap in the Information Technology services and products and an evolution in the Pay as You Go or On-Demand Services, will be addressed by Cloud Computing. Cloud computing depends to a large extent on the virtualization of the resources. Virtualization is fast emerging and updating as a game-changing technology in the enterprise computing space. It is viewed as a technology useful for testing and development and is affecting the entire data-center ecosystem. In this paper we have discussed various challenges faced by cloud computing and virtualization in order to implement E-governance strategies for effective governance and highlights the drastic change which cloud computing has brought and describes its impact on it industry & Egovernment. The paper also proposes cloud vision for effective governance and describes the ways to enhance the public sector E-governance strategies with Cloud Virtualization and raises security issues in adoption of those strategies. Keywords: Virtualization, Cloud Computing, Data center, Security 1. Introduction Cloud computing is a highly awaited and now implemented future dream of having subordinated and interactive services and software features and applications, at reduced operational/additional cost in the IT/cyber market, at highly technically automated and performance-based open system, an on-demand cyber services and these are just very few of the advantages and features that this cloud computing bring to this industry and what all oriented services cloud computing provide us. It works and establishes on a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and delivers services and features as requested by the end and cyber users. Since cloud computing is focusing on service oriented architecture, we are extensively reliable on third party for our data which are present in the servers and data centers located at different and invisible geographical latitudes and longitudes over the world. This reliance on third party for data shifts our attention to the implementation of security and standardization for cloud computing. The end or cyber users by no means, can identify data integrity and confidentiality of data. The need is to improve the usage of cloud environment by implementing and adopting various E-governance strategies. Both cloud computing and virtualization plays a very important role in implementation of the strategies governed by the security protocols through E-governance [1]. 2. Integration of Virtualization & Cloud Computing Cloud computing has become the latest buzzword in the it industry among companies as it is expected to "free" people from their desktop computers/personal computers and let them access data services anytime, anywhere with the help of an network/internet connection. It infrastructures have become too complex for the pace and dynamism of business today in todays scenario. 70% of current it investment remains active and focused on maintenance, leaving little resources for innovation. With users clamoring and requiring

Department of Information Technology, SITG, Sabar Education, Gujarat Technological University, Gujarat, India *Corresponding Author: (Email: amitjoshiudr@gmail.com, Telephone: +91- 9460488464)

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for faster response times and management demanding lower costs, it needs a better strategy. Cloud computing offers a new model that cuts through it complexity by leveraging the efficient pooling of ondemand, self-managed virtual infrastructure, consumed as a service. Virtualization is an emerging it paradigm/frame work that separates general computing functions and technology implementations/adaptations from physical hardware. Cloud computing is inclusive of virtualization and its features and a way to implement it. However cloud can be implemented without virtualization and its features as well. Cloud and virtualization both help in order to deliver optimized resources, on-demand utilization, shared data centers, flexibility and scalability. Cloud was implemented more of a outsourced/hosted application based model first and then slowly being adopted for virtualization within the enterprise firewall as an hosted architecture. Virtualization on hand is implemented and on the other hand was started within the boundaries and walls of enterprise firewall and then was utilized in hosted environments with latest trends. 3. Features of Cloud Computing - The environment of the cloud provides the beneficiary resources which are on demand as there is isolation so no need to actual sharing of the resources. - Cloud environment and effective computing is heterogeneous in nature. - It values and adds the virtualization to the data and hardware resources too. - It enhances and deals with end user or cyber user security. - Well stabled clouds are operated by single companies, but we envision federated/deviated Clouds facing similar problems as smart grids and grid environment. - Clouds are very easily usable which hides the deployment details from the user. - Cloud users are regularly charged by bill cycle as pay per-use model. More advanced and security based payment models and SLA enforcement in a federated/hybrid Cloud are just starting to be explored that will tear down one of the most important barriers to moving traditional applications to the Cloud i.e. the loss of cost control and revenue enhancement. - Currently Clouds are provides limited and implemented set of features exposed (i.e. they present a higher abstraction level to the user) [2]. 4. Role of Virtualization in Cloud Computing Virtualization and Cloud computing are at boom and getting a lot of attention these days, irrespective of their role in government enabled strategies. Virtualization permits to enhance our existing resources by decoupling the software (like servers) from their underlying and essential hardware. The main role of virtualization is to use the existing hardware and resources for multiple purposes at the same time. \ Cloud Computing favors the process of virtualization. The main aspect in integration of cloud computing and virtualization is to develop such strategies with the help of electronic governance to relocate the security issues which is a matter of great concern A Cloud network has similar advantages and also takes virtualization a step further. Data and applications are managed and controlled across a number of hardware devices only allocating as much space as needed at any one time. This scalability allows you to pay for only what you use and, if your demands change the new needs are instantly met. On a cloud platform, multiple hardware devices and load balancing monitors are active which translates to improved reliability and performance of your services. With Virtualization and Cloud computing you improve reliability by removing the single point of failure, you better utilize resources so you only use what you need and pay for what you use and, you reduce energy wasted running under-utilized computing equipment [3]. Discussing the trends and utility of Virtualization, with cloud computing environment Gartner reports states that Initially used just for cost reduction, server Virtualization is now also being used to speed up 136

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operational processes and server deployment, create disaster recovery solutions where they didnt exist before, and improve server availability. X86 architecture server Virtualization is now considered a effective mainstream trend (roughly 25% of the market penetrated), and the strategic path from server Virtualization to cloud computing is becoming more apparent to enterprises [4]. 5. Considerations for building Virtualization in Cloud Computing based E-governance Applications In order to build cloud based application the following considerations have to be taken care of: 5.1 High Availability: Applications deployed through the cloud must lend too much infrastructure costs with respect to traditional mechanisms. High availability of users is beneficial in case of disaster recovery and planning. 5.2 Dynamic scalability: Application deployed through the cloud using virtualization must have the resources available on demand and can be scaled immediately. 5.3 Low Latency rate: The latency rate through the front end, middle ware and the back end across all layers on the web must be low. The scaling of the database in the cloud environment is the most challenging aspect of the deployment because the resources are geographically dislocated and due this problem the government has to take care of the disaster management [5]. Cloud Usage Scenario for E-governance Applications National E-governance plan, has some 54 mission mode projects. About 22 projects are in the state sector, ten each, that states can choose, which makes it 32 projects in the state sector alone. When these 32 projects are executed across 35 states, it will become something like 1200 projects. Further, single or multiple projects in the municipalities, that itself send the number of projects to thousands. There is a huge opportunity in the government for cloud computing implementation, due to the amount of time and the resources are wasted for doing a standard way of procurement through the private clouds which enhance to a better way of effective governance - the way forward is to have a public cloud. The figure shows how cloud services are being used in India and what would be there future. The figure states that till now we were using a traditional cloud services. Now we have moved to Virtualized services and private services of cloud which are of prime importance and for future prospective of cloud computing we are moving on to public cloud which is expected to be achieved by 2014.

Figure 1- Usage of cloud services for effective E-governance

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6 Major Challenges for Government in Implementation of Cloud Computing The major challenges for government in implementation of cloud computing are : - Scalability. - High Reliability. - Securing Data in the Cloud. - Open Standards and Interoperability. - Revise Procurement Practices. - Resolve Potential Legal Issues. - Regulate the Cloud Market. - Redefine the Roles of the IT Workforce. - Assess and renders the Return on Investment of Cloud Computing. 7 Cloud Effective Eco system- Public, Private and Hybrid Clouds The key components of a cloud ecosystem are the virtualized services which are effectively managed by SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and helps the end users in order to use the cloud computing services through the IT administrator. The cloud ecosystem includes services for each of Public, Private and Hybrid Clouds. The cloud ecosystem also manages services through a pool of resources meeting requirements. At the core of the ecosystem there is a hyper visor which allows virtualization of cloud resources to manage the IT Infrastructures. The main aim of using private clouds is to provide a flexible and agile infrastructure rather than consume resources. Now in cloud Eco system we are moving from Virtualized and Private clouds towards Public Cloud [7].

Figure 2 - Cloud Ecosystem

Source : Intel IT Cloud Computing Taxonomy and Ecosystem Analysis,August 26th, 2010- Connected Social Media Syndication

E-governance Implications and Cloud Benefits

8.1. Data Scaling: The databases should be highly scalable, to deal with large and high data over the years and levels for EGovernance applications.The relational databases assures the integrity and managablity of data at the lowest level, so cloud databases could effectively be scaled and can be used for such type of applications.

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8.2. Auditing and Logging: Traceability and track of any changes to information content in E-Governance services is required. Process and security audits must be done regularly and periodically to ensure the security of the system.

8.3. Replication and Migration: Applications in effective E-Governance work for department, states and municipalities and hence take more time, effort, resources and budget. This happens for all the instances of these applications. Capabilities and possiblities must exist to replicate and increase these to include another municipality or e-court as part of E-Governance. 8.4. Disaster Recovery: Cloud computing and virtualization technologies allow storage backups and restoring. It offers application change or migration seamlessly compared to local/traditional data center. 8.5. Performance Analysis: The architecture and changing technology adopted for the E-Governance initiatives should be scalable and common across delivery channels to meet the growing population. If the analysis is implemented effectively, the E-Governance portals could become the biggest users and beneficiaries of Cyber Age. 8.6. Reporting and Intelligence (Better & Effective Governance): Data center usage (CPU, hardware storage, network), 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 and enables better visibility into various services provided by the Egovernment. 8.7. Policy Management: E-Governance applications have to completely implement policies of the governments in terms of dealing with citizens. Along with the cloud infrastructure and data center policies has to be enforced for day to day operations with respect to effective governance. 8.8. Systems Integration and Legacy Software: Cloud is created on SOA( Service oriented Architecture) principles and can offer excellent solutions for integration of various applications with virtualization. 8.9. Migration of Traditional Technologies to new Technologies: Technology migration is the biggest challenge as we are moving to different versions of software, applying application and security patches is the key to maintaining a secure data center for E-Governance. 8.10. Going Green (Green Computing): The power usage, air electronic waste could create bio-hazard and have to be effectively managed in order to maintain a effective governance [7]. 9 Security issues associated with the cloud for better governance There are a large number of security implications/concerns associated with cloud computing but these issues fall into two broad categories: Security issues faced by cloud providers (organizations providing Software-, Platform-, or Infrastructure-as-a-Service via the cloud) and security issues faced by their customers. In most cases, the provider has to ensure that the infrastructure is secure and that their clients data and applications are protected while the customer must ensure that the provider has taken the proper security measures to protect their information. 139

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10 Dimension of Cloud Security Better and effective security controls should be managed and implemented according to asset, threat, and vulnerability risk assessment matrices. While cloud security implications can be grouped into any number of dimensions (Gartner names seven while the Cloud Security Alliance identifies thirteen areas of concern) these dimensions have been aggregated into three general areas: Security and Privacy, Compliance, and Legal or Contractual Issues [6]. 11 Proposed Security Algorithm & Technique The basic steps of proposed algorithm are: - The basic work is to find the secret key. So at the gateway of the network the global time is grasped and stored in registers. Now to calculate secret key for the first block we just add number of hours, minutes and seconds. Thereafter a secret key is generated. If it exceeds 25 shift keys it is processed again and same process is done as mentioned in randomized technique. - Now the first block of information is processed according to the secret key used as a shift key. - As soon as a blank space is encountered, it signifies the end of first block. Now to encrypt second block a new shift key has to be generated. - The new key is generated by the same technique as mentioned above that if the number is even, divide by 2 else multiply by 3 and add 1. If exceeds 25 the processing is done again till a number less than or equal to 25 is encountered. - The algorithm proceeds as such all the blocks are encrypted and the message ends. - For decryption also same procedure is followed. Global time of message sending is recovered by the receiving network gateway and accordingly decryption takes place step by step. The complete procedure of the algorithm or the steps of the algorithm are shown in Figure 3. Data Sets 1 & 2 includes a-z alphabets and 0-9, special characters respectively.

Figure 3 - Block Diagram for Proposed Security Algorithm 12 Pros and Cons of Proposed Algorithm and Technique The algorithm can be easily implemented as there is no use of complex computation techniques and the algorithm relies on very basic computations techniques. The most important advantage of the algorithm is that no secret has to be passed along with message bits as it could be generated at the receivers side. The 140

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algorithm has used the existing caesar cipher technique manipulated the technique using random key generation. As the number of computations increases slightly the complexity increases but is balanced by the increasing number of combinations which can be randomly created. The number of combinations randomly increases to about 100 times the number of computations. A minimum number or no secret key has been to be passed to the algorithm in order to encrypt which is very low in comparison with other algorithms [8]. 13 Algorithms Computation and Testing The algorithm was tested on local area network (lan). In the implementation of the message it was noted that 12 small computations were performed for generating the shift keys for different blocks which is the key task for the proposed algorithm. In addition to that 5 shift operations were performed on different blocks. So by using a total of 17 small and basic operations the target is achieved. So a normal processor which can perform basic mathematical operations is enough for the algorithm. But for third party it is difficult is crack the generation of the secret which is actually the key requirement of the algorithm. And in order to decrypt the message all the possible combinations has to be tried which are 625 for above used message shown in table 3. For decryption a large time and memory consumption is required for checking of each combination which is 625 for the presented data set. The complexity of the algorithm is very low, since a fewer number of computation have to be performed for completion of secret key generation and the encryption of the data set and vice versa. The data set a security approach towards communication is encrypted to t oayqnepu laaczlns kfnriuj pbzzhavpngvba using the algorithm. 14 Cloud Vision for Effective E-governance 14.1. Internet over Cloud: According to a survey conducted in 2012 August 89% of total online users are using some form of cloud computing i.e. atleast 89% of online users have done at least one of six activitiof them. 14.2. Distributed Data Centers: One of the most important center of effective governance is to enhance the data centers in distributed forms which can equally distribute the data on demand as and when needed. 14.3. Distributed Data Centers operations: Distributed data centers of cloud would become centralized and offer more benefits in terms of the resource usage. Data Center operations aim to provide uninterrupted and available service to the application even if one of the data center fails. Success Rate of implementation of E-governance through cloud Computing Figure 4 shows the success rate for implementing E-governance strategies by making a comparision between the traditional infrastructure and cloud infrastructure in which the cost of the cloud data centers is comparatively lower than the tarditional data centers. According to a survey conducted in August 2012 the varation examined in the data center costs was approximately 23%.

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Figure 4 Success rate for effective governance through clouds 15 Conclusion The cloud provides a wide spread services to various end users. Cloud enables the Egovernance services faster and cheaper through service oriented architecture. The paper studies and discusses the challenges for secured effective E-governance through cloud computing and virtualization. The paper also enlightens the cloud vision of E-governance and discusses the success rate of cloud implementation for Effective Egovernance. The paper also highlights the challenges of secure governance by proposing a security protocol for cloud environment and discusses its pros and cons. The paper concludes that public cloud through virtualization is a better alternative for implementing Effective E-Governance Plans and Strategies. References 1. Amit Joshi, Bhavesh Joshi, Manuj Joshi. An approach initiating security protocol towards cloud, International Journal of Computer applications - RTMC(7):-, May 2012. Published by Foundation of Computer Science, New York, USA. 2. Amit Joshi. Integration of virtualization and cloud computing Challenges for government and It Industry, E-governance Techno-Behavioural Implications- Oct 2011, 978-93-81361-43-6, 33-46. 3. www.cipherspace.com/PDFs/CipherSpaceWebPrint-Virtualization.pdf dated November 10, 2012. 4. http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/cloud/Gartner-VMware-Magic-Quadrant.pdf dated November 10, 2012. 5. http://www.slideshare.net/imagineashow/whitepaper-cloud-egovernance-imaginea dated November 10, 2012. 6. Rackspace Cloud: http://www.rackspacecloud.com (Accessed on 10 May 2011). 7. http://search.iiit.ac.in/uploads/CloudComputingForEGovernance.pdf dated November 10, 2012. 8. Amit Joshi. A Global Time Based Approach towards Communication, International Journal for Electro Computational World knowledge Interface 1(1): 44 48, September 2011 ISSN Number: 2249 - 541X (Print), 2249 5428 (Online).

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The Maturity of E-government Websites in the Republic of Yemen

Asma Al-Hashmi 1 *, Suresha1 and A. Basit Darem1 ABSTRACT The revaluation of ICT brings a lot of changes to the relationship between government and citizens. ICT created a new channel for citizens to communicate with government any time anywhere through e-government websites. This paper examines the current status of e-government websites in Yemen to define the maturity of e-government and to evaluate the progress Yemen government is making towards e-services delivery. The result showed that e-government websites in Yemen have attained better status at the first stage and second stage, but show very low achievement in the third and no achievement in the fourth stage.. Keywords: e-government, evaluation, website, UN maturity model, Yemen 1. Introduction E-government is defined as the delivery of government information and services online through internet or other digital means (West, 2004). It is also important to know that the greatest potential for internet use in public organizations lies in the applications designed to facilitate open communication between public organizations or agencies and create dialogue between citizens and their government (Dobrica, L. 2007). Governments around the world are increasingly interested in the potential for delivering government services on the World Wide Web (Shackleton et al. 2004) and the website is more expected to provide citizens with quality services, update and complete information, rich interaction, use online applications, access online services, etc The importance of measuring the performance of e-government cannot be overemphasized (Gupta and Jana, 2003). Therefore, investigating the quality of the website is a fundamental step in the websites life cycle in order to ensure success (Dobrica, L. 2007) and to ensure that these official websites are well managed and well designed. Yemen is a democratic country with a central government. The public service system in Yemen is introduced by 31 ministries directly or through their branches in the cities or governorates. With the advancement of the information communication technology (ICT) era, and the rapid increase in the number of internet users, it is important for the ministries to introduce and provide information and services to the citizens through the internet. Like other less developed countries, Yemen is seeking to develop ICT sector to sustain its development process (NPISY, 2007). In 2002 Yemen began a ten years plan towards e-government with a project to publish all ministerial information online. The council of ministries at November 2002 approved the national program for information technology as e-government project in Yemen. In 2003 the e-government initiative was announced and its website was launched as the Yemen portal. The other initiative is the national information center (NIC) website http://www.yemennic.net. It was launched in late 2006 to work as one of Yemens largest sites specialized in providing digital content related to a variety of fields to build, prepare, enlarge, develop and update a national information database to serve information seekers using a system of multiple means and ways, which allow the public to acquire the necessary information (NPISY, 2007). The NIC website includes 30 subdomains for 30 ministries as one of the practical methods in implementing e-government. Later on each
1

University of Mysore, Yemen *Corresponding Author: (Email: basit.darem@yahoo.com)

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ministry started its own independent website. Some ministries introduced good websites with a variety of information and services. Yemen scored rank 167th out of 190 countries as mentioned in e-government development index conducted by the UN e-government survey 2012. In 2010 Yemen was ranked at 164 (UN, 2010). It means there is no further improvement in e-government initiatives. This paper examines the current status of the ministries websites and the progress of the implementation of e-government initiative in Yemen to assess the level of maturity in different aspects taking into consideration the fact that Yemen is one of the developing countries which is facing a lot of problems in implementing e-government. The paper begins with a brief overview of the e-government in Section 1. Section 2 provides a brief discussion of the Literature Review. Section 3 provides the methodology used in this work. The findings and discussions are presented in Section 4. Finally, a conclusion of the study is provided in Section 5. 2. Literature Review E-government is utilizing the internet and the world wide web for delivering information and services to citizens (UN, 2002). E-government service delivery can be assessed by identifying and analyzing egovernment maturity which is based on the degree to which the properties of information technology have been utilized to enable the delivery of services electronically (Seifert, J. W. 2003). Different models defined the maturity of e-government such as Gartner (2000), United Nations (2010), Layne and Lee (2001), Hiller and Belanger (2001) World Bank (2002), and IBM Business Consulting Services (2003). They introduced different criteria and stages to define the maturity of e-government. For the purpose of our work, the United Nations (2010) Four Stage Model was selected. Emerging stage is the first stage that represents the official static website of e-government with links to ministries and departments. The citizens can obtain information on what is new in the national government and ministries, pertaining to law, regulation and relevant documentation. Enhanced information services stage is the second stage that provides one way or simple two ways communication between government and citizens such as searching for policies, regulations, documents, downloadable forms for government services and e-mail contact. The website has an audio & video capability and is multi-lingual. Transactional services stage is the third stage that represents two way communication between government and citizens such as requesting and receiving inputs on government policies, regulations, eauthentication of citizen identity, e-voting, downloading and uploading forms, financial transactions and applying for certificates, licenses and permits. Connected services stage is the last stage that presents the highest order of the evolution where e-services cut across departments and ministries in seamless manner. Information, data are transferred from government agencies through integrated applications. E-services are targeted to citizens through life cycle events and involvement of citizens in decision making. 3. Methodology In this paper 31 Yemeni ministries websites were proposed for evaluation based on UNs e-government maturity model. The process was started by using Google search engine to search for the official website of each ministry. The search results were 25 URLs for 25 ministries. We tried to search for the remaining 6 ministries using different search engines or by checking the NIC website, but the result was negative. The criteria selected were as mentioned in the previous section for each stage of the UN model. Each website was reviewed separately many times to check each feature carefully. Each feature was assigned a 144

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weight (1 if the feature is implemented and 0 if the feature is not implemented). The result was fed to Excel sheet. Finally the data were analyzed using descriptive statistical methods. 4. Result and discussions Out of the 25 URLs retrieved by Google, only 18 URLs worked, it represents 58% ministries of the total 31 ministries websites. Other 7 ministries have URL but it is either not uploaded (ex: ministry of communication and information) or suspended such as (ministry of power). Despite several attempts to access these 7 URLs during the period of two months (September and October 2012) to see if they are working, the same results were obtained every time. The remaining 6 ministries websites (such as ministry of culture, ministry of interior, ministry of electricity and energy, ministry of labor and social affair) did not have any URL. This paper suggests that decision makers should have the awareness regarding the availability of the websites and the government should set a policy to make the availability of the websites as a compulsory requirement for the government organizations. Therefore 18 ministry websites were evaluated and the results were presented.

First Stage (Emerging): Table 2 below shows that all (100%) ministries give information about the organization. The search facility was available in 72% of the 18 websites. Sixteen websites (89%) had Links to other organizations. Around 83% of ministries updated their website regularly and also had contact us option page (see figure 2). Table 2- First stage: Emerging

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Figure 2- First Stage Second stage (Enhanced): Downloadable forms were presented only in four websites or 24%. Audio and video capabilities were available in only 17% websites. Around 50% of studied websites provide English language. Feedback and registration have the same percentage which is 28%. Table 3- Second stage: Enhanced

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Figure 3- Second Stage Third stage (Transactional): Ministry of local administration and ministry of industry and trade are the only two among the studied ministries that applied uploading forms as one of the features of this stage. The other features in this stage were not implemented by any other website (Table 4). The study recommends the urgent need to reengineer the manual services to be fully-automated and available for citizen online. Table 4- third stage (Transactional)

The fourth stage (connected): The criteria in this stage are web comment form, online consultations, citizen views, democratic participation in decision making. The basis of the above features, none of the ministries has reached this stage. So the study suggests that all the government departments should be integrated to allow facilitating information, transactions and e-services in seamless manner. Government should also empower citizen to be more involved in decision making. Overall achievement Table 5 presents the overall achievement of ministries websites in Yemen. In the first stage, only 9 ministries achieved 100%. Six and 2 ministries achieved 80% and 60% respectively. Only one ministry achieved 40%. In second stage, most of the ministries (10) achieved only 20%, 6 ministries achieved 40%, where as the ministry of industry and trade achieved 80%, the ministry of justice achieved 0% of this stage. In the third stage, only two ministries had achieved 25% achievement.

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Table 5- over all achievement

5. Conclusion The result showed that, out of 31 websites, 13 ministries websites do not have presence in the internet. The other18 websites have a better status at the first stage and second stage but have very low achievement in the third and no achievement in the fourth stage. The paper highlighted the urgent need for more effort and attention to be given to improve these websites. Taking into consideration that developing the initial trust of the citizens in the government websites to communicate and complete their transactions in the near future is very important and it deserves more and more effort. So, the citizens can keep pace with the rapid developments in the information technology era and citizens can reap the maximum extent of the benefits offered by the ICT. It also suggests that government should follow or adopt the existing websites guidelines and models or develop its own guidelines that are appropriate for its context. References 1. Dobrica, L. (2007). Considerations about cities websites evaluation. In Proceedings of the IADIS International Conference on e-Society. 2. Gartner Research. (2003). Traditional ROI measures will fail in government, Retrieved October 15, 2011, from http://www.gartner.com/resources/116100/116131/traditional_roi.pdf. 3. Gupta, M. P., & Jana, D. (2003). E-government evaluation: a framework and case study. Government Information Quarterly, 20(3), 365-387. 4. Hiller, J. and Belanger, F. (2001): Privacy strategies for electronic government. e-government series, Price Water House Coopers, p 173. 5. IBM Business Consulting Services. (2003). How e-government are you? e-government in France: State of play and perspectives. Retrieved October 17, 2011, from http://www03.ibm.com/industries/government/doc/ content/bin/g510-3552-00-esr-e-government.pdf. 6. Seifert, J. W. (2003). A primer on e-government: Sectors, stages, opportunities, and challenges of online government. Library of Congress Washington DC Congressional Research Service. 7. Layne, K., & Lee, J. (2001). Developing fully functional E-government: A four stage model. Government Information Quarterly, 18, 122 -136.

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8. National Profile of the information society in Yemen (NPISY), (2007), ESCWA, UN. Retrieved October 2012 from http://isper.escwa.un.org/Portals/0/National%20Profiles/2007/English/Yemen-07E.pdf 9. Shackleton, P., Fisher, J., & Dawson, L. (2004). Evolution of Local Government E-Services: the applicability of e-Business maturity models. InSystem Sciences, 2004. Proceedings of the 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on (pp. 9-pp). IEEE. 10. UN (2002), Benchmarking e-government: a global perspective, UN Technical Report, United Nations. Retrieved October 2012 from http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan021547.pdf 11. UN (2010), E-government survey: E-Government for the People, UN Technical Report, United Nations. Retrieved October 2012 from http://www.unpan.org/egovkb/global_reports/10report.htm 12. UN (2012), E- government survey: Leveraging E-government at a Time of Financial and Economic Crisis, UN Technical Report, United Nations. Retrieved October 2012 from http://www.unpan.org/egovkb/ global_reports/12report.htm 13. West, D.M. (2004). E-government and the transformation of service delivery and citizen attitudes. Public Administration Review, 64(1), 15-26. 14. World Bank (2002) Issue Note: E-Government and the World Bank. World Bank, LAC PREM. November 5, 2001

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A GIS Based e-Governance Solution for School Mapping and Educational Micro-Planning a Case Study of the State of Maharashtra, India
Nirav Shah1 and Amrutaunshu Nerurkar1* ABSTRACT Ensuring adequate access to the quality school education is a key consideration of any government especially of a developing country like India. GIS based e-Governance solution for school mapping for identification and micro-planning of school locations has been massively utilized across the globe. The paper is a discussion and analysis of a successful implementation of GIS based school mapping for the state of Maharashtra in India. The main objective of the project was to identify the un-serviced sites for opening or up-gradation of schooling facilities. The paper outlines in detail the project objectives, the methodology followed, and the final outcomes. The project achievements and its limitations are also discussed along with some guidelines for effective utilization of the GIS spatial data. The paper concludes by proposing a phase-wise generalized framework for designing and implementation of GIS based school mapping solution which is especially relevant in the Indian context.
Keywords: School mapping, Geographical Information System, e-Governance, Education micro-planning

1. Introduction Providing access to quality elementary education to all sections of the society spread across the geography should be a key consideration of the government of any developing country like India in order to create an economically thriving society. This in turn leads to the development of nations economy and lowers the social as well as regional inequalities such as caste based inequality or urban rural divide. Multiple research works in the field of education such as Hannum and Buchmann (2005) have confirmed these outcomes. In India, the central government in partnership with the state governments has started a nationwide program called Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA)2 (supplemented by Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA)3 for secondary education) for the achievement of universalization of elementary education. The program also helps in ensuring the effective implementation of Right To Education (RTE) act4 of the government of India which makes education free and compulsory to the children across the country of 6 14 years age group as their fundamental right. One of the basic building blocks of SSA is the parameter of Access which not only aims to open new schools in those habitations which do not have schooling facilities but additionally tries to ensure equitable distribution of resources within and between school systems of different regions with varying populations. The term access also signifies the aim of increase in access and in turn the enrolment of girls and children of other minority or underrepresented socioeconomic groups. Hence, to ensure that
1
2 3

PricewaterhouseCoopers Pvt. Ltd. (PwC), India *Corresponding Author: (Email: amrutaunshu.nerurkar@in.pwc.com)

Refer SSA Portal (www.ssa.nic.in) Refer RMSA webpage (http://mhrd.gov.in/rashtriya_madhyamik_shiksha_abhiyan) 4 Refer Govt. of India official RTE webpage (http://mhrd.gov.in/rte)

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children across the country have adequate access to the schooling facilities, it is of paramount importance for a governmental body at any level (central, state, or district) to use a normative, scientific and ITenabled approach for identification and micro-planning of school locations. School Mapping (SM) as technique for identification and micro-planning of school locations has been massively utilized across the globe. School mapping has been first used in France in 1963 (Caillods, 1983). Over the years, many developed countries in the Europe or the USA utilized this technique while recently many Asian and African countries have started implementing it at different levels for educational micro-planning (Caillods & Heyman, 1982; Been, Caillods & LeoRhynie, 1984; Govinda, 1999; Attfield, Tamiru, Parolin & DeGrauwe, 2002; Galabawa, Agu & Miyazawa, 2002 and Shah, Bell & Elahi, 2011). Literature also exists which outlines the steps and considerations for a typical implementation of school mapping (Caillods, 1983; Varghese, 1997). A Geographical Information System (GIS) based school mapping has been a recent trend in this domain (Hite, 2008). The technological advancement in the field of GIS is a major contributor in the development of an e-Governance solution for the school mapping and educational micro-planning exercise. In India, where there is unequal distribution of resources, insufficient access to schooling facilities, and geographical as well as social divide, a GIS based e-Governance solution for carrying out school mapping exercise is perfectly relevant. The present paper is a discussion and analysis of a successful implementation of GIS based e-Governance solution for school mapping for the state of Maharashtra in India. The paper is primarily based on the work that the authors did with the Department of Education of Government of Maharashtra as consultants to the project and their interactions with the department officials. The remainder of the paper is divided into six sections; the first section sets the context of the project in the state. The next section discusses the objectives, timelines, and stakeholders of the project. The methodology being used along with the specific challenges faced during implementation are also discussed. The third section is detailed analysis of the outcomes and achievements of this project along with its limitations. The next section outlines the activities that the state should undertake in future so as to effectively utilize the GIS data for informed decision making. The fifth section is a discussion on a proposed framework for designing and implementing a GIS based e-Governance solution for School Mapping in India. The final section contains concluding comments. 2. Background Maharashtra is among the most economically developed states in the country along with being one of the largest. The States population, which is 9.29 per cent of the entire countrys population, is 11.24 crore5. Maharashtra has more than one lakh (0.1 million) elementary (Primary 1st to 4th standard and Upper Primary 5th to 7th standard) schools out of which more than two thirds of the schools are government or local body schools with enrolment crossing 1.5 crores (15 million)6. The state has more than 20,000 secondary (8th to 10th standard) and higher secondary (11th 12th standard) schools7. As a state which is situated in the middle of the country, Maharashtra is surrounded by Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Oriya, and Konkani speaking states. Thus the state has schools with 10 different primary medium of instruction8. Owing to such large scale operations, the state was facing major challenge in ensuring that each and every student in the state has adequate access to the schooling
5 6

Source: Census 2011 (www.censusindia.gov.in) Source: District Information System for Education (DISE) 2011-12 (www.dise.in) 7 Source: Secondary Education Management Information System (SEMIS) 2010-11 (www.semisonline.net) 8 Source: District Information System for Education (DISE) 2011-12 (www.dise.in)

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facilities. The state did not have any data on whether every eligible child in the state has a schooling facility in the nearby vicinity of his / her habitation in the medium of choice as mandated by the RTE act which came into effect on 1st April 2010 in the state. On 16th June 2009, in a cabinet decision, the government of Maharashtra decided not to sanction opening of any new government aided or unaided Marathi medium school only based on the application. The cabinet decided to sanction the opening of new schools only after preparing School Master Plan for every district in the state. The school master plan was supposed to provide district wise details for opening or up-gradation of new schools such as exact village location, proposed medium of instruction depending on the population, and the school category (Primary, Upper Primary etc.) amongst others. Owing to the sensitivity of the subject, it was of paramount importance to the state to follow a normative, scientific, and technology enabled approach for compiling the school master plan. So, in a meeting with hon. Chief Minister of the state, a decision was taken to carry out GIS based school mapping exercise. The next section provides details on the overall objectives, timelines, stakeholders, and methodology being followed in the project along with the major challenges during execution. 3. Project Objectives, Methodology and Challenges Faced School Education Department of the Government of Maharashtra monitors the Primary (class 1 to 4), Upper primary (5 to 7), Secondary (8 to 10) and Higher Secondary (11 to 12) classes of all schools (both private and government / local body), primarily governed by the SSC Board, in Maharashtra. Every year under the centrally sponsored schemes; Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) the department conducts the District Information System for Education (DISE)9 and School Education Management Information System (SEMIS) 10 data collection surveys every year which capture large variety of data pertaining to all the schools in the state such as school profile, enrolment and repeaters details, teacher details, infrastructure and teaching learning facilities, Mid-day Meal scheme11 details (in DISE), and examination results (in SEMIS). The survey forms are filled by the schools manually, digitized at the district office, and collated at the state level to be shared with the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India. The department decided to utilize the data collected in DISE and SEMIS surveys coupled with the Census data while executing the school mapping project. The specific objectives of this project were outlined as below: - To locate all the schools (about 1.2 lakhs) in the state (all categories primary, upper primary, secondary and higher secondary; private and government / local body) on the digital map of Maharashtra - To identify the AS-IS situation of the state in the Access parameter and locate the possible locations where primary, upper primary, secondary, and higher secondary schooling facilities are needed based on distance, population, and language norms. To bifurcate the locations based on whether A new school is required to be built Existing school needs to be upgraded (for example, primary school to be upgraded to upper primary school etc.) - To increase access to schooling facilities for children belonging to minority groups (such as access to Urdu medium schools for Muslim children in Muslim populated areas) and also for children residing in border areas (such as access to Marathi medium school for Marathi children
9

Refer DISE Portal www.dise.in Refer SEMIS Portal www.semisonline.net 11 Refer Mid day Meal Portal - http://mdm.nic.in/
10

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residing in a particular village of Jath block of Sangli district which has large Kannada population owing to close proximity to the state of Karnataka and alsho has a Kannada medium primary school) To create a School Master Plan using satellite based mapping of schools (by locating all schools on the digital map of Maharashtra) with due consideration of geography and demography of the area

The project started in end of 2010 and was aimed to finish in six months period including the mapping of schools on the GIS map, identifying the probable locations for the opening or up-gradation of schools and compilation of school master plan. The key stakeholders of the project apart from the department of Education were Maharashtra Prathamik Shikshan Parishad (MPSP)12 which is the nodal agency responsible for the implementation of SSA and RMSA projects in the state, and Maharashtra Remote Sensing Applications Centre (MRSAC)13, an autonomous body under department of planning, for implementing the GIS based mapping. The department took a conscious decision not to outsource the school marking activity to outside agency and decided to utilize its staff spread across the state for this work. The project followed a structured methodology which helped in timely execution of the project. The specific steps involved in the implementation of the project are detailed below: - Geo-referencing of the settlement location The department utilized the district wise village settlement files provided by MRSAC for all the census villages (as per Census 2001). The village settlement file essentially consists of village centre location in GIS format. Using village settlement file as the base layer, MRSAC did the geo-referencing of the settlement location (village centre location) using Google Earth services on the Google map with the error factor of 50 to 100 meters. A sample village settlement GIS file with the settlement location is depicted in the figure 1 below.

Village Settlement (Centre) Location on Google map

Figure 1: Village Settlement Location on Google Map Marking the Schools on the Google Map Using the village settlement map of the state as the base layer, the department undertook the massive work of mapping all the schools in the state. The mapping of the schools, completed in a three month
Refer MPSP website - http://www.mpsp.maharashtra.gov.in Refer MRSAC website - http://www.mrsac.gov.in

12 13

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period, was undertaken by adopting the bottom up approach where the block officials would mark schools for their blocks by taking into consideration the idea of school locations provided by cluster officials14. These files were later compiled at the district level so as to form one district school marking file consisting of marked schools for that district along with village centre locations for all the villages in that district. Linking DISE / SEMIS / CENSUS data with the marked schools Each district wise DISE (for primary and upper primary schools) and SEMIS (for secondary and higher secondary schools) data which can be uniquely identified with each school was linked with census village codes to create a DISE SEMIS Census (DSC) file. With the help of this file a village wise distribution of schools is generated. The entire analysis was initially done using Excel VBA on MS Excel 2007 platform. Later the Excel based distribution files were linked with school marking GIS files to get the result as shown in the figure 2 below.

Linking the marked schools with DISE, SEMIS, and Census data

Figure 2: Linking Spatial data with DISE, SEMIS and Census data Analyzing the data using GIS Software After linking the schools of all the districts with the DISE, SEMIS and Census information, the data analysis was done using ArcGIS software to identify the un-serviced areas. The norms which were formulated for granting new schools in rural and urban areas are described in the Table 1 below. Sr No 1 Area Rural School Category Primary Distance Norm Population Norm15

Within 1 KM radius of Greater than 200 village centre location

14

Cluster is a logical unit comprising of a group of 10 to 15 nearby schools. Under the SSA scheme, a Cluster Resource Coordinator (CRC) is responsible for periodic monitoring of schools in his / her cluster. Typically, about 10 to 15 clusters form one block (tehsil).

15

Census 2001 village population data was used with necessary extrapolations

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Within 3 KM radius of Greater than 1000 and Potential village centre location enrolment from neighbouring primary schools Within 5 KM radius of Greater than 2000 and Potential Secondary village centre location enrolment from neighbouring upper primary schools Within 10 KM radius of Potential enrolment from neighbouring Higher secondary schools Secondary village centre location Treating Schools as centres the same distance norms as described above were applied and a territory of the town was formed. This Urban All Type town map was checked if there are not empty spaces within the town jurisdictions Table 1: Distance and population norms for rural and urban areas Upper Primary

Buffering technique was used where the buffers (concentric circles) were drawn with village centre location as the centre of the circle to identify whether a particular category school exists within the circle as per the distance norms as depicted above. A sample buffered GIS school marking file is depicted in the figure 3 below. A district wise list of un-serviced villages (as per the specific school category) was identified using this technique.

Figure 3: GIS school marking file with buffers Identification of additional requirements The hilly areas and wadi/wasti villages irrespective of whether they were identified in the buffering process as not having the schooling facility within the prescribed norms were analyzed manually by the department. Using the distance measuring tool inbuilt in Google Earth the actual road distance was calculated and additional requirements were identified. A sample manual calculation of road distance is depicted in the figure 4 below.

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Calculation of By Road Distance for hilly areas

Figure 4: Identification of additional locations By road Further analysis was also done to identify up-gradation needs of the Urdu schools (primary to upper primary and so on) in the state based on the current school category, total village population, and total Muslim population of the block where that village resides. Additionally, to identify the requirements of Marathi schools in the border areas of the state, village level analysis of the schools was done in specific border blocks of the border districts such as Jath block of Sangli district or Dharmabad block of Nanded district etc. Compilation of District wise School Master Plan After identifying village wise requirements of opening of new school or up-gradation of existing school, the department compiled district wise School Master Plans containing the village wise requirements of schools for primary, upper primary, secondary, and higher secondary schools for both rural and urban areas. Master plans were also prepared for up-gradation requirements of Urdu medium schools and new Marathi school requirements in the border areas of the state. The department faced multiple challenges during the overall project implementation. The biggest challenge was that of Change Management. Owing to the large scope of the project (mapping more than 1.2 lakhs schools) and the bottom up approach taken for marking of schools, large amount of training and handholding efforts were required at ground level (block and cluster level). The department and MRSAC had to spend large amount of time in building the capacity of the department staff spread across the state. Significant efforts were also required for review process as the marking done by cluster officer had to be reviewed rigorously at block level and then at district level. As the project had many stakeholders, effective coordination between all of them was a challenge. Apart from these operational challenges there were few technical challenges. Integrating DISE, SEMIS, and Census data was a daunting task. For example, a secondary school will have both DISE and SEMIS code but both these databases are heterogeneous and do not have any common code which can link them to one another. Same is the case for Census database which do not share any common code with DISE or SEMIS data. So linking had to done based on the school names and then village names for linking them with Census database. In spite of these challenges, the department was successful in completing the GIS school mapping project reasonably within the stipulated timeframe. The next section discusses broadly the project outcomes, achievements, and its limitations.

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4. Project Outcomes, Achievements, and Limitations After combining the un-serviced locations identified by buffering technique and by road calculations in urban and rural areas, the department identified about 500 locations for primary schools, about 1500 locations for upper primary school, and more than 100 locations for secondary schools in the state. The project revealed that the elementary education facilities are not equally accessible to the rural populations in certain educational divisions16 of Maharashtra especially the Aurangabad and Pune division. Aurangabad and Pune educational divisions of the state had the highest need for primary schools (totally accounting for about 80% of the un-serviced locations) amongst all the divisions in the state. While the need for upper primary schools was identified mainly in Aurangabad, Pune, and Amravati divisions (accounting for about 66% of the un-serviced locations) and the need for secondary schools was identified mainly in Aurangabad division (accounting for about 35% of the un-serviced locations) Certain key achievements for the state after successful implementation of such a large scale e-Governance project are discussed below: - The project is first of its kind undertaken by any state in India involving mapping of more than 1.2 lakh schools in all the categories and areas in the state. - The project signified the importance of change management. The entire task of marking the schools on the Google map was done by the department staff without outsourcing the activity to the outside agency which led to capacity building of the internal staff. - The project is a good example of team coordination as it is a well coordinated effort involving various stakeholders within and outside the department spread across the state. - The project was executed cost effectively by using Google Earth services and then utilizing the efforts of internal staff for school marking and the expertise of MRSAC which is an autonomous body under department of planning for GIS services and data analysis. Although a successfully implemented project, it has certain limitations which are being discussed below: - The school marking was done at cluster and block level by the local coordinators / experts on Google maps and once any school is marked, the geo-stamping (identifying GPS coordinates latitude and longitude of that school) exercise was carried out. For greater accuracy, this could have been done other way round, by identifying the GPS coordinates of the school by manually visiting the school location and using a GPS device. This approach was not taken as the manual effort of identifying GPS coordinates would have taken lot of time and also would have required procurement of GPS device to be provided at cluster level which was a costly affair. - In urban areas, population norm could not be applied as the data on the density of the population was not available. - Medium wise school requirement could not be compiled for all the villages due to non availability of language/religion wise population at village level. Thus the Urdu school upgradation requirement was identified by taking into consideration Muslim population at the block level. - Limited layers of GIS data were used for analysis. For greater accuracy, contour maps can be used along with population or enrolment layers but it would also have required much more time and effort. - The analysis for the requirement of opening of new schools and up-gradation of existing schools was carried out taken into consideration the school elementary cycle as prevalent in the state (Primary: 1 to 4, Upper Primary: 5 to 7, Secondary: 8 to 10). This needs to be revised as per the RTE elementary cycle (Primary: 1 to 5, Upper Primary: 6 to 8, Secondary: 9 to 10).
16

The state of Maharashtra is divided into 8 educational divisions: Mumbai, Pune, Kolhapur, Nashik, Aurangabad, Latur, Amravati, and Nagpur. For details refer: http://www.mpsp.maharashtra.gov.in

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The project was carried out totally in an offline mode and no web access was provided for any kind of community participation for community based school marking review and subsequent decision making.

After a detailed discussion of project achievements and its limitations, the next section discusses in brief the probable next steps in the GIS school mapping in the state. 5. Utilizing the GIS Data for Informed Decision Making The GIS based school mapping project in the state is just the right beginning. In order to utilize the collected GIS data much more comprehensively in informed decision making, there are many additional activities that state should do around the GIS data in future. Some of the must-do activities are outlined below: - Integration at database level of DISE, SEMIS, Census 2011, and GIS School Mapping data of the state needs to happen so that the existing databases containing the school, teacher, student information and the village wise population information can be linked with the digital spatial data of the schools. - Once such database is developed, an integrated web based School Information system can be developed which has in-built GIS and Business Intelligence (BI) modules which would help officials at various levels (from a school headmaster and cluster coordinator to education secretary of the state ) in informed decision making by comprehensive data analysis and effective monitoring of schemes. - Such web based GIS system would also enable the state to facilitate democraticallyoriented GIS use in communitybased decision making by implementing a crowd sourcing technique like Public Participation in GIS (PPGIS). As the name suggests, in PPGIS the emphasis is more on public and participation and it is central to its vision (Ghose, 2007). With PPGIS, the crowd sourcing happens as the efforts of review and evaluation get decentralised at the community level while the provision of resources and other decision making remains centralized. - The GIS school mapping data of the state can be extremely useful for research students of different academic streams. The state, therefore, should make put this data in public domain by uploading it on government of Indias data portal, data.gov.in. - Additional research should take place in order to find out how the school mapping project impacts (positively or negatively) on various aspects with respect to the development of education in the districts such as increase in enrolment and attendance, decrease in drop-out rate, and improvement in the availability of information for decision making amongst others. - After analysing in detail the school mapping project in Maharashtra; its methodology, outcomes, achievements, and limitations, we propose a framework for designing and implementing a GIS based e-Governance solution for school mapping which is especially relevant in Indian context. It is described in the next section. 6. Proposed Framework for Designing GIS based School Mapping Solution In this section, we discuss a proposed phase-wise framework for successful designing and implementation of GIS based school mapping solution. It is generalized in nature but is also highly relevant specifically for any Indian state. It is depicted in the figure 5 below. As depicted in the figure below, a typical GIS School Mapping project is logically divided into five phases. The project starts with Appraisal phase which essentially consists of identifying the school mapping objectives of the covered area (a state or country in most cases). The objectives once defined would help in formulating the project scope, timelines, key stakeholders and the necessary budget. A project proposal needs to be documented outlining these areas which would get appraised and evaluated by the concerned department officials. Project scope might be needed to be changed depending on the 158

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evaluation and budgetary approvals. This phase would end once the official go ahead is obtained from the department along with the necessary project funding. The next phase, Preparation, mainly consists of formation of Project Implementation Committee (PIC) which would act as the steering committee during the project implementation. The committee can optionally involve external consultants to conduct the AS-IS study with GAP analysis and assess the database integration requirements for the project. The team would come up with the final project scope document along with the functional requirements and subsequently choose the GIS agency as System Integrator for project implementation. In the Design phase, the GIS agency would prepare an approach note for the entire project implementation while the PIC would formulate a task force consisting of department officials across all the levels which would be coordinating with the PIC for project implementation at ground level. Considerable amount of time should be spent in this phase in training and capacity building of the task force. It is advisable to do a pilot GIS mapping of schools in a particular rural and urban area. Learning from the pilot study should be incorporated during the implementation phase.

Figure 5: Proposed framework for Designing and Implementation of GIS School Mapping The Implementation phase starts with integration of the existing school or village databases with the spatial school data. This should be followed by the actual school marking on the GIS map and geostamping (assigning the GPS (Latitude, Longitude) coordinates to the marked school). This school GIS layer would be placed on the other GIS layers like village layer or population layer etc. Once the spatial data is linked with the other databases, the review process should be started at every level. The review can also be done in a decentralized manner utilizing crowd sourcing techniques (such as PPGIS as discussed earlier). The reviewed and corrected GIS data should be then collated at the highest level (such as state or country level) for data analysis. The final phase of the school mapping exercise is the Analysis phase. It mainly consists of detailed analysis of the GIS data (by using techniques such as buffering etc.) as per project requirements to come up with the final project outcome report for decision making. Other MIS reports can also be generated which are useful for authorities at different levels. This data can be shared in public domain for the benefit of future research. Although the project ends here, PIC must ensure that it undertakes continuous evaluation and improvements in the GIS school mapping data at periodic level. For obtaining sustained benefits in the longer term, the school mapping exercise should not be a onetime activity only for the purpose of data collection. Rather, it should be a continuous process of assessment, evaluation, analysis, and action. 159

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Although this is a generalized framework, we strongly feel that it is a logical starting point for any GIS based school mapping effort. We are summarizing this paper by mentioning the concluding comments in the following section. 7. Conclusion In the last decade, GIS based e-Governance solution for school mapping for identification and microplanning of school locations has been massively utilized across the globe which help governments to ensure adequate access to the quality school education for all the children. In the state of Maharashtra, in India the department of Education undertook a massive project of GIS based school mapping for identifying the un-serviced locations where the schooling facilities need to be provided or existing facilities need to be upgraded. By mapping all categories of schools in rural and urban areas on Google maps and integrating this spatial data with existing school information and census databases the state compiled a school master plan which identified the un-serviced locations in the state for every district as per the defined distance and population norms. The project revealed that the elementary education facilities are not equally accessible to the rural populations in certain parts of Maharashtra. The project, first of its kind in the country, is a good example of the use of technology for decision making and good governance. The project also signifies the importance of change management and coordination for execution of such large scale e-Governance projects. Although, there are certain limitations which can be overcome to aid informed decision making, overall the project is successful in meeting its objectives. From the learning of this project, a phase-wise generalized framework has been proposed for designing and implementation of GIS based school mapping solution which is especially relevant in the Indian context and can be utilized effectively by other states. References 1. Attfield, I., Tamiru, M., Parolin, B., & DeGrauwe, A. (2002). Improving microplanning in education through a Geographical Information System: Studies on Ethiopia and Palestine. Paris, France: UNESCO Publishing International Institute for Educational Planning. 2. Been, V., Caillods, F., & LeoRhynie, E. (1984). Intensive training course on school mapping and microplanning: Ocho Rios, Jamaica. Paris, France: IIEP/UNESCO. 3. Caillods, F. (1983). Module I: School mapping and microplanning concepts and processes. In F. Caillods, J. Casselli, T. N. Chu & G. Porte (Eds.), Training materials in educational planning, administration and facilities: School mapping and microplanning in education. Paris, France:IIEP/UNESCO. 4. Caillods, F., & Heyman, S. (1982). Intensive training course on microplanning and school mapping: Arusha, Tanzania UR. Paris, France: IIEP/UNESCO. 5. Galabawa, J., Agu, A. O., & Miyazawa, I. (2002). The impact of school mapping in the development of education in Tanzania: An assessment of the experiences of six districts. Evaluation and Program Planning, 25, 2333. 6. Ghose, R. (2007). Politics of scale and networks of association in public participation GIS. Environment and Planning A, 39(8), 19611980. 7. Govinda, R. (1999). Reaching the unreached through participatory planning: School mapping in Lok Jumbish, India. Paris, France: IIPE/UNESCO. 8. Hannum, E. & Buchmann, C. (2005). Global educational expansion and socio-economic development: an assessment of findings from the social sciences. World Development, 33 (3): 333-54 9. Hite, S.J. 2008 School Mapping and GIS in Education Micro-planning. Paris, France: IIEP/UNESCO. 10. Shah, T. I., Bell, S., Elahi, M. (2011). School mapping in education micro-planning: a case study of Union Council Chak 84/15L, District Khanewal, Pakistan. In A. Aitken, M. Kamal & B. Patrick (Eds.), Prairie Perspectives: Geographical Essays (Vol: 14), Department of Geography and Planning, University of Saskatchewan, Canada 160

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11. Varghese, N. V. (1997). Module 8: School mapping. New Delhi: National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration. URLs: 1. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan: www.ssa.nic.in. Accessed: 8th November 2012 2. Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan: http://mhrd.gov.in/rashtriya_madhyamik_shiksha_abhiyan. Accessed: 8th November 2012 3. Right To Education: http://mhrd.gov.in/rte. Accessed: 8th November 2012 4. Census of India, 2011: www.censusindia.gov.in. Accessed: 9th November 2012 5. District Information System for Education (DISE): www.dise.in. Accessed: 9th November 2012 6. Secondary Education Management Information System: www.semisonline.net. Accessed: 9th Nov 2012 7. Mid day Meal Portal - http://mdm.nic.in. Accessed: 11th November 2012 8. Maharashtra Prathamik Shiksha Parishad: www.mpsp.maharashtra.gov.in. Accessed: 11th November 2012 9. Maharashtra Remote Sensing Applications Centre: www.mrsac.gov.in. Accessed: 11th November 2012 10. Government of India Data Portal: http://data.gov.in. Accessed: 12th November 2012

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Access and Awareness of Mobile Market Information Services for Market Linkages among farmers in Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India
Senthil Priya .P 1 * and Mathiyalagan N. ABSTRACT The spread of mobile phones across the country has opened a new arena of agricultural information for the farmers in India. Growth of mobile in India signifies that mobile phone-based applications are gaining popularity and it is inclusive in its reach. Some states in India have successfully deployed various mobile-based initiatives to offer efficient citizen service and the field of agriculture is no exception. Many ICT based agricultural tools have been introduced in the past decade to connect farmers to commodity markets and increase agricultural market efficiency. Many of these new agricultural ICT projects offer need based SMS alerts to the farmers and connect farmers to agricultural web portals. The present study evaluates the access and awareness of Agricultural Mobile Market Information System (MMIS) for market linkages among farmers in Coimbatore, Tamilnadu. The study also outlines the determinants of awareness of MMIS service and the constraints in adoption. Keywords: Mobile Market Information System, M-Governance in Agriculture, Mobile Agriculture, Agricultural Market Information, ICT Section 1 1. Introduction Agriculture is considered to be the backbone of India. However, the agricultural sector has seen unprecedented crisis in recent years due to global challenges and unpredictable factors that have arisen due to many contributing conditions within the country. Although the economic reforms initiated within the country has helped the economy to achieve an impressive growth trajectory, growth in agriculture does not match the growth in services or the industrial sectors and also the rate of agricultural growth decelerates every year (Gupta, 2007). Hence, there is a critical need to address the various challenges in Indian agriculture and evolve an effective, instant network for dissemination of agricultural knowledge and information to the farmers. Tamil Nadu is the seventh most populous state in India with a population of 72,138,958, as of July, 2011 (approximately 5.96% of India's population). The rural population remains at 37,189,229 (51%) and urban population remains at 34,949,729 (49%). The state has 32 districts, 215 taluks and 17,292 villages (www.tn.gov.in). Literacy rate in Tamilnadu remains as one of the highest in India at 80% with rural literacy rate contributing to 74% and urban literacy at 88%. In the last decade, there is an increase of 6% in rural education scenario (www.censusindia.gov.in, www.census.tn.nic.in). It is the fifth largest contributor to India's GDP and the most urbanized state in India. For administrative convenience, the state is categorized into districts, taluks and villages. Agriculture continues to be the most predominant sector of the states economy, as 70% of the population is engaged in Agriculture and allied activities for their livelihood. Predominantly, traditional farming in family owned agricultural lands are the main occupation of people and majority of the farmers live in the periphery of an urban center with an average 15 miles proximity to the nearest town or city. In recent years, the agricultural economy has slowed down in the state mainly
1

* Corresponding Author: (Email: ishaan_arya@rediffmail.com)

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due to migration of population and the risks associated with practicing agriculture in rural areas that lack modern amenities. There are 8 million (Policy Note, 2008) farming families in the state and almost, all villages in Tamilnadu have basic amenities like roads and electricity connections. Traditional agricultural market information systems provided low-cost information to farmers, traders, and consumers via radios or rural extension officers, market agents. But, modern ICT infrastructure and citizen service centers have not been established in many of these areas. At present, most villages in Tamilnadu have reliable mobile coverage and broadband internet connectivity of 256 kbps. Majority of the population are settled in rural areas and in rural Tamilnadu, due to outbound migration, the share of rural population have come down over the years from 73.31% in 1961 to 56.14% in 200001(www.tn.gov.in). Agriculture faces various challenges like continuous reduction in farm size, decline in area under cultivation due to competition for land from non-agricultural sectors, water scarcity, excessive dependence on monsoon rains, reduced investment in agriculture, overexploitation of ground water, deterioration and lack of maintenance of irrigation tanks, agricultural labor scarcity, inadequate post harvest and storage infrastructure. The present study is divided into sections. The first section briefs about the introduction, objective and scope of the study. This section also provides the background of the study, ICT in Agriculture, agricultural market set-up in Tamilnadu, problems in agricultural marketing, E-Governance to MGovernance, benefits of M-Governance, M-Governance accessible in India and Mobile Market Information Systems. The second section describes the review of literature and the conceptual frameworks used in the study. The third section elaborates on the research methodology used in the study. Section 4 gives the Summary, overview and discussion of the study. Section 5 provides the conclusion and recommendation of the study. 2. Objective of the Study - To examine the accessibility and awareness of ICT tools and MMIS services for market linkages among farmers in - Coimbatore district - To identify the demographic, socio-economic, psychological and institutional factors that aid in awareness of the ICT - tools - To evaluate the determinants of awareness of ICT tools and MMIS services among farmers in Coimbatore district. 3. Scope of the study The extent of mobile ICT deployment in agriculture and its usability among farmers in Indian agriculture remains uncertain. So far, it has not been clearly established about the accessibility and awareness of ICT tools for agricultural market linkages facility. Indian studies on ICT deployment have focused on other sectors such as education, health, banking, e-government and tourism but only less research has been done on ICT usability in Indian agriculture. The diffusion and adoption of Mobile Market Information Service (MMIS) and its impact on rural farmers in the state of Tamilnadu has not been studied so far. Hence, this study aims to fill the knowledge gap in the area and present the accessibility and awareness aspects of Agriculture based ICT tools useful for farmers to establish connectivity with commodity markets. 4. Background of the study ICT in Agriculture: Information Communication Technology has brought in considerable developments throughout the third world and the field of agriculture is no exception. ICTs, particularly mobile phones, 163

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e-mail and the internet, are radically changing the way farmers sell their products in commercial and retail markets. More than computers, it is the mobile phones that have evolved out to be the most successful and ubiquitous ICT technology of this decade and the potential role of mobile phones, particularly in agricultural marketing and market information dissemination cannot be ignored. Also, more recently, ICTs have started to revolutionize the way some farmers sell their products in commercial markets. As of 2008, there were 364 million mobile phone subscriptions in Africa, 460 million in Latin America, and 1.8 billion in Asia (ITU 2008) and the number of mobile subscribers keep increasing every day. There are about 80 million Internet users in India, while the number of mobile phone subscribers was around 771 million at the end of January 2012 (Draft Bill, 2012). Due to the low cost of installing mobile phone towers relative to a network of telephone lines, mobile phones are the most relevant technology for almost all developing countries, particularly in rural areas (Jensen, 2009). This spread of mobiles has opened a new arena of information source for the farmers in India and many of these new agricultural ICT projects offer web portals to provide farmers with agricultural information and mobile phones are used as channels to communicate market price and other relevant agricultural information to the rural farmers. Recent figures suggest that only 81 million Indians (7 percent of the population) regularly use the Internet and 507 million Indians own mobile phones for communication. Also, Indian telecom operators sign up 20 million new subscribers every month (The Economist, 2010). This fact makes it an ideal channel of communication especially in rural areas. Governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international donors are taking advantage of this new technology revolution to help farmers in accessing agricultural market information. They are convinced that low-cost access to agricultural market prices could yield sufficient benefits for the farmers and increase their profit margins. Hence, when provided within the right framework, mobile phones could become a very effective media of communication with the farmers in rural areas. Agricultural Market set-up in Tamilnadu: Traditionally, vegetable marketing in Tamil Nadu revolves around central markets, where commission agents and wholesale traders collect the farm produce from farmers and distribute it to retailers. Commission agents act as middlemen and retain 10 per cent of all transactions. As they do not make a direct financial investment, they have a low margin of risk and the producers are highly dependent on commission agents for sale of commodities. Whilst large -scale farmers usually sell directly to central market commission agents, small farmers who produce smaller volumes of vegetables sell to local traders, especially during the dry season when production is lower. However, local traders often act as assemblers for commission agents, and in majority of the cases, it is the latter who fix prices (S. Rengasamy et al, 2003). There are essentially three kinds of commodity markets available for farmers in Tamilnadu classified as the central markets, local traders market and farmers markets. The first market is the conventional central market, which is a highly complex system that involves a centrally located trading place where the commodities are traded primarily by commission agents. This market supplies commodities to various local markets and is linked to other markets within Tamilnadu and neighboring states. The second market available to farmers is the local traders market where local traders collect local produce and then channel it to central market or directly to retail markets. The third outlet is only available to registered producers in the feeder villages and it is called as the farmers market (Uzhavar Sandhai). This market facilitates direct sales of farm product by farmers directly to the consumers. It was created specifically to increase the profitability of small farmers through direct sale of commodities at specified prices in specially created farmer markets. Problems in Agricultural Marketing in Tamilnadu: Earlier, one of the major challenge facing rural farmers in the country was the lack of access to timely, relevant market information and lack of access to relevant agricultural content for efficient faming that enabled farmers to make critical agricultural decisions on time. Farmers faced multiple crisis not only related to finance but also on personal front. They had to depend on many intermediaries, right from the process of procuring raw materials to selling their produce in commercial markets. As the production and supply chain was long there were many 164

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intermediaries who bought the products from the farmers for a lesser rate and sold it at a higher rate in retail markets where they had good connections. Since, the farmer was forced to sell his produce at the easiest accessible market through middlemen, after sales, the intermediary added his own profit margin, thereby increasing the cost of agricultural commodity at markets. Some intermediaries even tried to block the market information as only then it was possible for them to procure the commodities from the farmers at a cheaper rate. The farmers were left at the mercy of middlemen to close commodity transactions. At the end of the cycle, the farmers who cultivated and strived on field were deprived of profits and the consumers who bought the end products paid high price for the same commodity. On both ends, there were considerable monetary loss and the middlemen gained considerable profits through such transactions. Also, small-scale farmers who were traditionally dependant on middlemen lacked timely market price information to negotiate the best deal available at the commercial markets. They also lacked agricultural intelligence on weather and crop information. Studies highlight that lack of market price information to farmers creates information asymmetries that reduce the bargaining power of farmers among middlemen who buy their products (Jaleta and Gardbroek, 2007). In the last decade, remarkable progress has been made in the use of ICTs for agriculture in many of the third world countries. Many ICT tools such as mobile phones, e-mail and the internet have brought in a sequence of changes in the agricultural marketing scenario. It can be rightly said that these technologies have revolutionized the lives of tech savvy farmers within the country and has succeeded in providing them with relevant agricultural information and improved their livelihood by increasing their bargaining power. Studies highlight that fact that expansion of mobile coverage in Niger has resulted in reduction of volatility across all grain markets within the country (Aker, 2008). Widespread use of mobile telephony connects farmers with markets, weather and other relevant agricultural information. ICTs can also help with market research, enabling farmers to make better decisions about what to grow and when to grow it. Efficient market information systems can link producers with buyers even before their crop is harvested in some cases before the seeds are sown. Big buyers need to know well in advance how much of a certain product they can rely on. E-Governance to Mobile Governance: E-Governance has emerged as a popular phenomenon to deliver government services around the world. However, However, E-Governance, in an implementation sense is restricted primarily to the use of computer based internet access to deliver citizen services. In countries where the penetration of computers and internet is relatively low, such as in India, there is an apprehension that the reach of E-Governance may be limited. The limited reach of E-Governance has made many peripheral countries to think of alternate and cost efficient technologies, such as mobile phones, to reach the residents and deliver public services. This phenomenon has been driven primarily by the rapid growth of mobile phone subscribers in several developing countries. Mobile governance or mgovernance is the latest evolution of e-governance services that involves utilization of wireless and mobile technology services, applications and devices for provision of services that benefit citizen, government or private units. It includes delivery of all types of public services including making payment for government services through mobile based technologies. India, with its more than 771 million mobile phone subscribers offers a unique proposition to develop into the worlds first truly mobile digital society (Draft Bill, 2011).The rapidly expanding subscriber base of mobile phone users in the country can help in accelerating the use of modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) for improving governance and ushering in inclusive development. In order to provide multi channel and ubiquitous access of government services to the citizens the mobile governance policy of Indian government aims to build an enabling mobile service delivery infrastructure consisting of a Mobile Service Delivery Gateway (MSDG). It will be fully integrated with the existing infrastructure created under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP).

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5. Benefits of M-Governance - Easy usability and mass reach - Portability - Greater market penetration - Easier and timely delivery of critical information - Low running costs - Greater number of users when compared to internet based applications - Fewer infrastructures cost to set-up - Instant delivery of information to classified consumers - Multiple applications are possible through mobile, smart phones based on user needs Agricultural Mobile Market Information System (MMIS): Mobile phones are also used as channels of communication to provide agricultural market price and other relevant agricultural information to the rural farmers As mobile phones has evolved out to be the most important channel of communication among majority of its citizen and due to familiarity of people with mobile-based applications, it is looked upon as an alternate mode of communication that transcends physical barriers. MMIS are systems that regularly collect price information of agricultural products, quantities traded and diffuses such information to the public (state) and also to private (agricultural producers, traders, consumers) vendors who are involved in any of the three stages of agricultural production chain. The information thus diffused is expected to improve market transparency and assist market actors to make efficient decisions. It is a strong tool that solves the problems related to agricultural markets such as information insufficiency, characterized as being incomplete and asymmetric between different actors (producers and traders in particular). In recent times, Market information systems (MIS) are largely promoted in developing countries to support the policies of liberalization of agricultural value chains. When MIS is delivered through mobile phones it is called Mobile Market Information Systems. Section 2 6. Review of Literature: Some studies have identified the potential of MMIS in developing countries. A report (2010) that evaluated Lifelines India, a mobile based ICT initiative for grassroot population argued that mobile telephony had the power and potential to transform lives on any rural landscape in India through affordable access to agricultural information and concluded that the project was successful and most of the farmers surveyed attributed agricultural income and productivity growth to the personalized agriculture advisory service provided by lifelines service. Kumar (2010) evaluated ICT for agriculture models in India, Uganda and Indonesia. The study identified that the most effective way to reach farmers with minimum literacy and provide them with timely agricultural information and knowledge was through the use of mobiles. It revealed that over 78% of farmers used mobile phones and 10% of farmers family had mobile phone access through a member of the family and the authors concluded SMS-based agricultural information systems were most effective as that was workable on all mobile phone models. DSilva (2004) evaluated Govi Gnana Service, an ICT info structure that provided a widely available, accurate, timely and credible agricultural information for rural farmers in Srilanka and found that information technology provided small scale farmers access to market information, increased productivity, improved their bargaining power in markets and also helped to locate forward sales contracts. DSilva and Ratnadiwakara (2009) explored the role of ICT in reduction of transaction costs in agriculture through better communication of agricultural information. The study found that there were significant costs attached to information search as these farmers hardly used any ICT to obtain agricultural information and the authors concluded that if farmers had used mobile phones at various 166

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points in the agricultural value chain, their information search costs could have reduced significantly. Lokanathan and Desilva (2010) assessed the impact of mobile 2.0 services in India that established link up of agricultural stakeholder information through mobile phones. The study found that technology adoption was very slow among the farmers and most of them ignored the SMSs for a variety of reason like low education levels and inability to retrieve and read mobile messages and the study concluded that mobile 2.0 based agricultural applications do play a significant role in reducing transaction costs, especially for small farmers to engage more effectively in agricultural markets. Other studies have identified the constraints of mobile based MMIS across the world. E-Agriculture report (2007) identified the limitations of mobile technology for agricultural information use as high costs of new generation handsets, potential trade-offs made by rural individuals and communities to find funds to acquire and use cell phones, limited network coverage, low bandwidth in some rural areas that could lead to marginalization of certain individuals and groups and limit the capacity of rural people to use the technology for more complicated applications, low awareness of potential benefits and technology limitations. Shaffril, Hassan, Hassan and D Silva (2009) analyzed the perception of Malaysian youth agro-based entrepreneurs regarding the contribution of mobile phone to their agro-business. The study concluded that age factor has a significant and positive relationship towards contribution of mobile phone for business and older businessmen recorded lesser usage of mobile phones. Gelb et al (2008) evaluated the adoption of ICT based Information Systems for Agricultural Development in Asia. The barriers of ICT adoption were identified as lack of suitable leadership, lack of change agents, need to support effective and successful traditions concurrent with adoption of innovations, lack of end user and community involvement, lack of political will, conflicting interests, fragmented coordination among donors and failure to adopt participatory measures. The study concluded that ICT projects should be consistent with stake holder needs and involvement of end users was very important for development of the community Liyange (2009) analyzed the importance of mobile communications and telecenters to achieve better connectivity of agricultural markets in rural Srilanka and concluded that integration of mobile phone technology with web technologies to process information faster would be very beneficial to the farmers. Also, mobile technology bypassed the farmers reluctance to interact with telecentres and overdependency on intermediaries for carrying out commodity transaction and the authors recommended that mobile phone technology could be used as a tool to leverage the overall farmer interaction with telecentres in rural areas. Mittal, Gandhi and Tripathi (2009) assessed the impact of mobile phones on small farmers across four Indian states. The study found that mobile phones had a considerable impact on agricultural productivity and new mobile-enabled information services were very useful for farmers in all these four states. However, the farmers should use it effectively to realize the full potential of information access. Some of the constraints identified among farmers in adoption of mobiles were access to farm credits, lack of capacity to take risks and infrastructure hurdles. 7. Conceptual framework of the study It has got four main facets and their relationship is presented below. - Demographic variables of farmers who interact within a particular social community create and aids awareness - Socio-economic factors also aid farmers in their awareness level of new ICT tools for market linkages. - Psychological factors play a major role in creating awareness of ICT tools in agriculture. - Institutional factors aid in awareness of new ICT tools.

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The conceptual framework for this study was developed based on the theoretical models of adoption and diffusion studies from past literature. Efforts were made to reveal factors that influenced awareness of ICT and MMIS tools based on demographic, socio-economic, psychological and institutional factors in this study. Section 3:
Research Methodology: The study was conducted in Sulur and Pollachi taluks of Coimbator district. Primary data was gathered through field surveys using questionnaire, discussions and observations. The two taluks were purposively selected for the study since it significantly re[resents the lowest and highest MMIS users among all other taluks of Coimbatore. Using the MMIS user database obtained from the e-extension department, a probability sampling in both the taluks was taken and telephonic interview was carried out with 34 MMIS user farmers in Sulur and 102 user farmers in Pollachi. Likewise 136 DMI adopter farmers from both these areas were interviewed. A non-probability, convenience sampling was employed to survey non-user farmers, 68 samples from 3 villages in Sulur and 204 farmers from 6 village of Pollachi subdivision were included in the field survey. Informal discussions were held with key informants, village leaders, progressive farmers and extension officials. Secondary data on various aspects, including geographic and demographic characteristics, institutional infrastructure, social structure, agricultural activities and other relevant data were collected from e-extension center of Tamilnadu Agricultural University, local government statistics such as district agricultural reports and participatory rural appraisal reports.

Section 4:
Data Analysis: As ICT in agriculture is a new concept that was popularized in the second of the last decade in many of the developing countries, new studies mainly focus on the first two stages of adoption cycle, that is, on accessibility and awareness of ICT tools in agriculture. This study also analyses the same context. Also ICT factors considered in this study solely refer only to the use of computers, internet and mobile phones by the farmers.

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Accessibility and Awareness of ICT technologies: Awareness level of MMIS and other ICT tools among the MMIS users remained high when compared with the MMIS non-users. 100% of the users and 81.61% of the non-users were aware of agricultural SMS alerts sent through mobile phones. Many of the farmers came to know about MMIS and its usage from fellow farmers and neighbors whom they meet at regular intervals. Some farmers were aware of the service through agricultural trade fairs. Only 17.65% of users and 16.17% of non-users were aware of picture transfer facility through bluetooth and most of them have never used it to transfer pictures of crops or any other agricultural activities. Among the respondents who were aware of the facility, the usability for agricultural purpose remained unexplored as many of the farmers revealed that they never thought to use bluetooth for agricultural purposes and they still relied on pulling out the whole plant and taking it to the extension officer to help. Some of the respondents even remarked that it actually might be a good idea to click a photograph and transfer it to the extension officials for help as it was a handy tool. 15.44% of users and 12.5% of non-users were aware of mobile conferencing facility and the users mainly used it to connect with their close friends and join in a conversation and very rarely used it for agricultural purpose. None of them had ever used the facility to connect with extension officials and clarify their queries. Awareness of Kissan Call Center was high among the farmers with a user awareness level of 84.56% and non-user awareness of 72.43%. However, out of all respondents, only 9 respondents have actually called the center for agricultural query and 3 of them remarked that the network was always busy and no one answered the call. The remaining respondents were aware of the facility but never made a call to the center for assistance. 43.39% of users and 28.60% of non-users were aware of nokia lifetools facility. 100% of user farmers were aware of MMIS facility through mobiles and 15.07% of non-users were aware of MMIS facility and some of the non-users did not know how to enroll themselves in MMIS. Almost all the non-users expressed willingness to enroll in the MMIS facility if they had help in enrolment. 66.92% of users and 15.45% of non-users were aware of DEMIC or agmarknet information portals. 83.83% of users and 62.5% of non-users were aware of the use of internet technology as an ICT tools but due to many constraints they have not accessed it for agricultural information. 81.62% of users and 24.27% of non-users were aware of Tamilnadu government agricultural web portal. 81.62% of users and 22.16% of non-users knew of Tamilnadu Agricultural Universitys (TNAU) web portal service. Almost all the farmers who had awareness about the government web portal were also aware of TNAU web portal. 37.5% of users and 13.97% of non-users were aware of on-line agricultural help services through TNAU website. Awareness level of the other agricultural web portal however remains at the level of 82% among the MMIS users and 22.16% among the non-users of MMIS. Awareness of agricultural information DVDs and other digital information sources was 74.26% among the users and 44.85% among the nonusers. Accessibility of mobile phones was around 96.45% in the study areas. Out of 282 MMIS non-user respondents included in the survey, 272 farmers adopted mobile phones for communication and only 10 farmers remarked that they do not own mobile phones. However, all the 10 farmers also highlighted that their son or grandson who lived along with them possessed mobile phones and used it for communication. Possession of computers remained comparatively less among the farmers at 36% among users and 40.80% among non-users. Also, MMIS remained very popular than the ICT tools among both the users and non-users. ANOVA, t test and Regression analysis for factors affecting awareness of ICT usage for market linkage: ANOVA, t test and regression analysis was run to determine the factors of awareness of ICT tools in agriculture which included demographic (Age, Education, Gender, Main Occupation), socio-economic (Income, Farm Size, Association Membership) psychological factors (Perceived Ease of ICT Use, Media 169

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Exposure of farmers, Scientific Inclination of farmers) and institutional characteristics (Contact with Extension, Perceived Usefulness of extension). Awareness of ICT technology was used as a dependent variable.

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Section 5: 8. Results and Overview The result show that age is not a significant factor that aids in awareness of ICT tools for market linkages. However, other variables such as education, main occupation, farm size, annual income, gender and association membership are found to be significant variables. The reason might be due to the fact that educated farmers are more inclined and interested to know about new innovations in agriculture. Also, farmers who are employed and practice agriculture as well as farmers who are also involved in other business along with agriculture tend to be more aware of new ICT technologies as they meet and interact many others from different profession and gain general awareness about new technologies. They seemed willing to learn and use new ICT tools for market linkages. Also, farmers with high annual income showed significant relationship as they have more risk taking ability and financial mobility to try out new technologies in agriculture. Hence, they are more aware of ICT tools for market linkages. Gender is a significant variable and men tend to use ICT tools more prevalently than women as they remain the decision makers in many families. Women farmers, though more educated than their male counterparts, were not interested in learning about new technologies in agriculture. Association membership showed significance as associations have evolved out to be a wide platform of agricultural communication among 171

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farmers and they shared lot of agricultural information in meetings. Other probable reason might be the fact that secondary dissemination in associations is stronger and member farmers gain awareness about newer technologies during their interactions with other farmers. However, the coefficient of perceived ease of ICT use was negatively correlated with awareness of ICT tools. The reason might be due to the fact that farmers do not look for ease of use of ICT to gain awareness of agricultural ICT tools. They might look for ease of use of ICT tools only when they decide to adopt these technologies. The relationship between media exposure of farmers and awareness of ICT tools among farmers is found to be positive and significant. This implies that, the farmers who read agricultural information manuals, magazines, newspapers and view related sources of agricultural information are more aware of new technologies. Hence media exposure of farmers is very important to aid in awareness of ICT. The analysis also shows that one unit increment in adoption of ICT tools would bring about 0.333 units increment in awareness of ICT tools. This implies that, adoption of ICT tools is very important to aid in awareness of MMIS and ICT. Thus, easy availability and awareness of ICT tools in the rural areas promotes adoption among farmers. The relationship between extension contact of farmers and awareness of ICT tools show that frequency of contacts or visits of extension agent to farmer is very important to aid in awareness of ICT tools. Thus, the availability of extension contact and meetings in the rural areas is of a paramount importance to farmers. Hence, extension contact with officers tends to improve the level of awareness among farmers. Since, scientific inclination of farmers show a negative correlation with awareness of ICT tools implies that, the farmers, though interested in technologies and visit agricultural expositions, trade fairs and other related activities, are not interested to know of new agricultural technologies and ICT tools useful in agriculture. The reason might be that the farmers do not adopt technologies unless they feel that fellow farmers have benefitted out of the same technology. As perceived usefulness of extension brings about 0.110 units increment in awareness of ICT tools it is possible that only when the farmers perceive that extension contact is useful for them, they attend the extension meetings and remain receptive to extension contact. Otherwise they never attend the meetings. Hence, the perception of farmers is very important to aid in awareness of ICT tools. 9. Summary and Discussion The ability of ICTs to transfer information via telecommunications networks that can send and receive timesensitive agricultural information, increases the value of information, lowers the cost of delivering it to farmers and improves the capacity of remote communities to participate in the information society. The potential of ICT in agriculture is not fully tapped in India. While, utilization of Information Technology creates wide range of possibilities at farm level as well as stimulate efficient decision making support service for farmers, the current levels of induction of IT in the agricultural front is rather less. At present, awareness among the farmers about new ICT for market linkages is not sufficient to help them to trade efficiently in agricultural markets. The level of awareness among farmers in the region about the role of ICT in agriculture is generally low. However, among users of MMIS, there is comparatively more awareness. Information and Communications Technologies in agriculture can be used to shift from the old tedious, less profiting approaches to a more modernized, convenient and potentially profitable approach. But a comprehensive plan for ICT adoption in agriculture is not available in Tamilnadu at present. A wide array of e- agricultural services has to be made available for the farmers through a common portal or access points. Weather information portal is very useful for literate farmers and rainfall prediction and other related predictions are by far the most accurate in Tamilnadu. Weather alerts are available and accessed by the farmers only through the web portal. Also, the weather prediction facility helps only the literate farmers who are internet aware. But for poor, illiterate farmers it has not brought in any change of status. E-illiteracy, lack if ICT infrastructure, high cost of ICT equipment, shortage of trained manpower who can assist the farmers in operating computers, lack of citizen service centers, as well as lack of awareness on the role of ICT in agriculture are serious impediments to any ICT expansion strategy within the rural community. Awareness has to be created within the community, particularly among the opinion leaders 172

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and decision makers for pro-ICT usage in agriculture to bring about significant changes among rural farmers. In the past decade, MMIS has evolved out to be the most reliable tool that helps farmers in rural areas to access prices of commercial markets. Mobile devices form an important part of National E-Governance Plan in India and as mobiles have a much deeper and wider penetration with over 97% of the population having access to this medium, mobile governance has the capacity to take government services closer to the citizens. Introduction of mobiles as a platform to deliver government services to the residents could thus be an important step towards mature mobile governance in India. Narula (2009) evaluated the awareness and usage of internet and other modern media among the famers of Punjab and Haryana in India and found that there was one hundred percent penetration of mobiles and forty percent penetration of computer in rural areas of the Indian states. Newspapers and mobiles were still the most important sources of agricultural information and only 20 percent of the farmers used internet for non-agricultural purposes. Mobile communication has the most advantage as information dissemination tool as it needed only fewer infrastructures than the internet based models for providing information. Also, mobiles were easy to use and information can be delivered as voice or readable SMS (Narula, B.K.Sikka, S.P.Singh and K.L.Chawla, 2008). Mobile alerts or SMS have become a communication of choice between people from all walks of life in Tamilnadu. It facilitates one-on-one communication with absolutely no loss of sent information. It is easy, convenient to use and most importantly, communicates messages instantly at no cost at all for the receiver. Though the other most prominently used ICT technology is the internet, the usage of it has not picked up in rural areas of Tamilnadu due to many social and economic barriers. While computer equipment is very suitable for storing and analyzing large quantities of data, it has little relevance in terms of a direct information service for farmers in Coimbatore taluk as majority of the famers cannot operate it and have the ability to communicate only in native language. Hence, it is very pertinent to develop new agricultural information via mobiles to bring in more utility of market linkage tools in agriculture. In rural areas of Coimbatore, availability of mobile technology has created a need to use it and this need has facilitated a kind of learning environment for the farmers. Equipped with only the basic literacy, some farmers have harnessed their skill by adequately mastering the facilities available for communication through the mobile phone channel and are able to use blue tooth technology and infra-red portability without any inconvenience. The adoptability of mobile phone usage among the farmers has in fact, created way for other newer ICT technologies. The farmers have adapted the usage of mobile phone technology by exploring through a self-learning process and likewise, when an opportunity is created for them to use computer technologies, effectively combined with their need to learn the usage of computers would propel them in the path of technology adoption process. The mobile phones have increased effectiveness in dissemination of market information. One of the most striking factors of the study is that many of the farmers expressed interest in learning about new ICT technologies that would be useful for them to handle day to day crisis in agriculture. They looked forward to ICT based training programs organized for them and keenly expressed desire to learn the use of computers and internet as they felt that it would help them to improve their farming practices. The farmers are also well aware of the challenges posed by the global markets and they are ready to face the challenges and they strongly feel that in this digital age, tech savvy farmers had a better chance in making better profits through effective use of ICT technologies. 10. Conclusion The cellular phone is considered one of the most promising new ICT technology that has not only revolutionized the manner in which business is transacted but has also enabled a large constituency of agricultural producers to access new markets and create trade linkages by sending local market 173

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information using Short Messaging Service. As mobile phones are used by majority of the farmers in Tamilnadu and India, it is looked upon as an ideal tool to efficiently deliver market information to farmers. Though, the pace of mobile adoption varies across the Indian regions, it has the ability to establish easy and instant communication with the farmers. Knowledge of market information plays a vital role in the functioning of wholesale and retail markets by facilitating competitive marketing process. Throughout the developed world, farmers regard market information provision as an essential requirement for their business and they do not face problems of information insufficiency. European and American farmers have access to over 200 internet sites containing information on prices, contact details for buyers and input providers, market news, yield forecasts, quality and packaging requirements for dozens of different products. A plethora of additional information is also available through trade and agricultural journals, government agencies, traders, and farmers unions. But, for farmers in Tamilnadu and India, the information access is still not sufficient. Efforts have to be mooted to create delivery of m-governance projects that makes the farmers participate in various projects. Studies prove that an appropriate blend of mobile and internet based ICTs could be used to efficiently deliver relevant information and cut down the number of change agents required along with the associated costs of information management. ICT projects have the capacity to facilitate easier, cheaper and direct delivery of information and it cuts down on time, resource and cost of information channels. M-Governance projects should be consistent with stake holder needs and involvement of end users was very important for development of the community. Hence, the challenge before the state government is how to broaden awareness, acceptance and usage of mgovernance services as the whole. The state government has to execute a roadmap that covers the broadband infrastructure in rural areas, a rural service delivery infrastructure that delivers a wide array of services that enables rural, agriculture-based transformation through one single portal. At present, the major concern is that many of farmers do not avail the services as they do not feel the need and dependency to use it. Awareness and publicity drive should highlight the tangible benefits that ICT technologies could offer. ICTs have to be integrated in the developmental agenda of rural India, only then the adaptability would eventually happen. Hence, when the need to access mobile based agricultural ICT tools are inevitable and at their doorsteps, access and usage can also be forced on the farmers in due course by presenting the agricultural information content in local language. An active collaboration among a complex system of stakeholder functions can turn this vision into reality. References 1. Anonymous. (2010). Lifelines - India: Mobile Application for Knowledge Advisories at Grassroots. National Forum on Mobile Applications for Knowledge Advisories at Grassroots (pp. 1-10). New Delhi: Lifelines India. 2. Aker, J. C. (2008). Does Digital Divide or Provide?-The Impact of Cell Phones on Grain Markets in Niger. Berkeley: University of California. 3. Desilva, H., & Ratnadiwakara.D. (2009). Social Influence in Mobile Phone Adoption: Evidence from the Bottom of Pyramid in Emerging Asia. Pre-conference workshop at the International Communication Association (ICA) Conferance (pp. 1-20). Chicago, Illinois: International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada. 4. Draft Paper on Mobile Governance Policy Framewor (March, 2011). k. New Delhi: National eGovernance Division, Department of Information Technology. 5. D'Silva, H. (2004). The Govi Gnana Service a unique ICT for development initiative to fight agricultural poverty in Sri Lanka. CTO Forum: ICT for Business and Development (pp. 1-10). Colombo: LIRNEasia. 6. E-Agriculture Report (2007) Enabling Agriculture. New Delhi, Available at www.eIndia.net.in/eagriculture/index.asp: eAgriculture India. 174

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7. Gandhi, S., Mittal, S., & Tripathi, G. (2009). The impact of mobiles on Agricultural Productivity. New Delhi: The Policy Paper Series, Volume 9. 8. Gupta, R. (2007, September), ICT for an Ailing Agricultural Sector. I4D , 5 (9), p. 5. 9. ITU. (2008). International Telecommunications Union, Yearbook of Statistics: Telecommunications Services. Geneva: ITU 10. Jaleta.M, & C.Gardebroek. (2007). Farm gate tomato price negotiation under asymmetric information in Agricultural Economics , 36 (2), 245-251. 11. Jensen, R. (2009). Information, Efficiency and Welfare in Agricultural Markets. 27th International Association of Agricultural Economists Conference, (pp. 1-25). Beijing, China. 12. Kumar, P. S. (2010). Mapping & Preliminary Evaluation of ICT Applications Supporting Agricultural Development. South Asia: International Finance Corporation . 13. Liyange, H. (2009). From Agri-clinics to FarmerNet: applying mobile phones and the internet to support rural farmers. Sri Lanka: Sarvodhaya -Fusion . 14. Lokanathan, S., & Silva, H. d. (2010). Leveraging Mobile 2.0 in India for Agricultural Market Access. Canada: LIRNEasia, International Development Research Center. 15. M-Governance Draft Bill (2012), Department of Telecommunications, Government of India, New Delhi 16. Narula, S., B.K.Sikka, S.P.Singh, & K.L.Chawla. (2010). Empowering Farmers through Mobile Telephony in India: A Case of IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Ltd. New Delhi: IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Ltd. 17. Narula, S. (2009). Usage and Potential of ICTs among Farmers - The Missing Links. Hyderabad International convention (pp. 1-15). Hyderabad: eIndia 2009. 18. Policy Note (2008, March), Tamilnadu Government Gazette, Chennai Rengasamy, J.Devavaram, T.Marirajan, N.Ramavel, K.Rajadurai, M.Karunanidhi, et al. (2003). Farmers' markets in 19. Tamil Nadu: increasing options for rural producers, improving access for urban consumers. Sage Publications, Available at http://eau.sagepub.com/content/15/1/25. 20. Shaffril, H. A., Hassan, M. S., Hassan, M. A., & Silva, J. L. (2009). Agro-based Industry, Mobile Phone and Youth: A Recipe for Success. European Journal of Scientific Research , 36 (1), 41-48. 21. The Economist (2010), March 23. Webography 1. www.tn.gov.in 2. www.censusindia.gov.in , www.census.tn.nic.in

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Ayush Sharma 1 ABSTRACT E-Governance or electronic governance is defined as the delivery of Government services and information to the public, using the electronic means including the dissemination of information to the people and the agencies. In India the concept egovernance began with National Informatics Centers efforts to connect all district headquarters though computers in 1980s. In 2002 it further proposed the setting up an Indian portal for public access to information on various aspects of government functioning. e-governance promotes the efficiency, enforces accountability, brings transparency in the working of the government system and reduces time delays; All important government policies are useful to people, e-governance also beneficial to the citizens. It involves technology, policies and infrastructure. This paper reveals the performance of e-governance in India in the context of its role in Agriculture sector, rural development and promoting social welfare. Keywords: e-Governance, Policies, Agriculture, Rural Development and Social Welfare. 1. Introduction As a new initiative during the Ninth Plan, the Department has formed an IT-eGov unit for progressive implementation of eGovernance and establish an IT enabled work environment. The Department has made adequate provision for IT activities in the Plan Budget for the year. The Department of Electronics and Information Technology, from time to time, in association with various educational and research institutions undertakes different inputs. e-Governance in India has reached at the Transactional stage and providing various services to citizens, business and government organization, offered by Central Government agencies and different State Government departments. National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), initiated in 2006, attempts to make all Government services accessible to the common man in his locality, through Common Service Centers (CSC) being set up across India. As on February 2012, about 97,159 (CSC Newsletter - 2012) CSCs was operational with different brand names and started delivering services to people. As the rural landscape in India is set to take the advantage of the flourishing ICTinitiatives, by various institutions, more specifically the CSCs. InDG initiative offers much required content and services in local languages that makes the difference in the lives of the rural people. The major focus of e-Governance vertical of www.indg.in portal is to support the ongoinge-Governance movement in India by providing one stop information access to availableonline citizen services, state specific e-Governance initiatives and awareness about online legal services, mobile governance, RTI etc. Keeping in mind the importance ofempowering the VLEs, InDG has included a new section VLE Corner to enrich them with resource materials and providing a platform to share their experiences in their own language. 2. Action Plan The IT action plan of the Department include the following: - Infrastructure Development: Provide Personal Computers (PCs) with necessary software support to all functionaries.
1

Birla Institute of Management Technology, India Corresponding Author: (Email: ayushmagician@gmail.com)

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Networking: Establish Local Area Network (LAN) and Intranet to facilitate file and information sharing between various functional units. IT Training: Provide relevant specialized training courses to the staff and Officers, to enable them working on computers. Office Automation: Implement the office automation system to maintain records of receipt, issue of letters and movement of files e-Reports: Convert the Acts, Rules, Circulars and other published material of interest or relevance to the public in electronic form. Website: Enrich the contents of the website by including forms and guidelines relevant to various citizen services being provided by the Department.

3. Achievements The various initiatives taken are following: - Three meetings of IT Committee were organized to assess and get specific recommendations regarding procurement/ development of IT related hardware/ software. Work on creation of communication circuits and the installation of required equipment was carried out to extend the Internet connections. Antivirus firewall and IDS level security services were established. - A web based Document Management Information System (DMIS) software, developed by NIC, after suitably tailoring it for DSIR use, has been hosted on to the DSIR server. DMIS is accessible by all DSIR officers and staff at Technology Bhavan using their ID and Password give to them through INTRADSIR. - The Department website is continuously updated and is available at http://www.dsir.gov.in and/ or http://dsir.nic.in. The main components of the site includes, What is New, Ministers, TPDU Programmes, Download , Publications, Technical Reports, Annual Reports and Directories of RDI scheme, etc. - A project was awarded to NCSI to carry out requirement analysis, application prototyping, database designing, database implementation, coding, integration with existing systems, testing for making. 4. Information Technology & E-Governance INTRADSIR more user-friendly with added features. - In order to facilitate easy retrieval, as many as, 162 Technical status reports of the Department were scanned and disseminated through CDROMs and Departmental website. - The Department is having a very valuable database on foreign collaboration approvals. This database is maintained on yearly basis on printed media on two volumes. To make the information in more user friendly way on online/offline form this database of all the approvals of foreign collaboration that were made during last 15 years, a software system development project was awarded to Institute of Informatics and Communication, Delhi University. - A proposal by NCSI is being executed for in-house creation of a comprehensive, central information system CINFOSYS by migrating all available databases developed on various components of TPDU using different languages. NICSI is stationing a programmer (specialized in SQL and other application software) at Technology Bhavan to assist the identified Content Owners to coherently migrate the available individual application software onto their respective data marts on DSIR SQL server. On completion of this project, a system will be developed to facilitate data mining for analyzing online the historical or time service data and identifying past patterns or trends. Presently DMIS itself is incorporated with an accessible template CINFOSYS. In the present form this template includes web pages on financial details, schedule of payment. Releases made under Technology Development and Demonstration Programme of 177

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TPDU. On completion of the project, similar information on other components of TPDU as well as a feature to generate/ maintain online from their own terminals by the respective Content Owners will be available. Described as transformative as well as something that might create a fair amount of ambiguity in the way government departments work, the Electronic Delivery of Services Bill, 2011, has elicited a lot of interest. It has raised the anticipation of those who have, for long, sought to leverage the power of technology to improve governance structures and the mechanisms through which public services are delivered. The Bill seeks to provide government services and certificates to people electronically on their doorstep, sparing them exploitation by officials. Once it becomes an Act, all Central and State government departments will be mandated to publish a list of services that are electronically available within 180 days and will start rolling them out within five years. Since the delivery of such services is time-bound, penalties up to Rs.20,000 could be levied on errant officials. The receipt of forms and applications, issue or grant of licence, permit, certificate, sanction or approval and the receipt and payment of money all of them can be done through the Internet. Chakshu Roy of the Delhi-based PRS Legislative Research, an independent research initiative, said: The government is currently in engagement mode. At least two rounds of consultations were held with representatives from outside the government to draft this Bill. But in all this Lokpal hungama, a lot of people haven't heard about this landmark legislation. E-governance per se is not a new concept in India. The Central and State governments spend over Rs.3, 000 crore a year on e-governance initiatives. But the question is whether the expenditure has had any noticeable impact on the lives of those who wait in long queues to avail themselves of government services. Legal commitment All that the Bill attempts to do is to make e-governance services into legal commitments, says Mr. Roy. But he cautions that the Bill may overlap with other big-thrust legislation such as the proposed Public Services Delivery Bill and the Information Technology Act, 2000, which talks about delivering e-services through public-private partnerships. If you look at it in an administrative sense, the government departments would not differentiate eservices and regular services. It might just create a fair amount of ambiguity, and officials would follow provisions which are the most favourable to them. It may also pave the way for the entry of the private sector, just like the Tata Consultancy Services partnering the government to collect and verify passport application information. Fragmented set-up Jitendra Shah, a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology-Mumbai and information technology consultant to the Maharashtra government, says that while e-service commitments can make a difference, the government's ability to deliver is severely restricted by the lack of raw data in standardised formats. Our whole e-governance set-up was conceived in a fragmented manner. Each department does its own thing. All other countries have national standards. But for decades, there has not been a national mandate in India to standardise and integrate all available government data. Obviously, there are forces out there that do not want it.

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Citizen-profiling Kris Dev, co-founder of the Transparency and Accountability Network, an NGO, suggests that the government try some means of citizen-profiling, now that the Unique Identity Project is in the doldrums. There has to be a digital footprint of each request and complaint, otherwise it is easy to fudge. That is one problem that keeps surfacing in our field surveys in the public distribution system, anganwadis and noon-meal programmes. E-governance has the potential to transform the lives of people. It has to be given a fair chance. 5. Cloud Computing and Virtualization Cloud computing is a disruptive technology model that is changing the way public sector organizations consume Information and communications technology (ICT), and how they deploy and deliver services to stakeholders. A trusted network infrastructure is the foundation for any successful cloud implementation. This paper briefly reviews the status of cloud computing in government, education, and healthcare organizations. It also helps make the business case for a cloud implementation by summarizing the chief advantages and business drivers. Case study snapshots describe how public sector organizations have successfully implemented cloud services models in various environments worldwide. Cloud services provide all these organizations with convenient, on-demand access to a common pool of configurable computing resources: networks, servers, security, storage, applications, and services. With a cloud implementation, an organization can tap the compute power available over the Internet, reaping the advantages of data center consolidation and shared public and private resources. Moreover, users can access virtualized, productivity-boosting services that were previously unavailable to them. In fact, virtualization is currently a major driver of cloud deployment across all sectors. Clouds allow even small public sector organizations in local communities to innovate in ways that would not be possible were they forced to rely entirely on their own resources. Cities can share resources across a region, and agencies can collaborate across jurisdictions. These entities can move forward to take advantage of cloud Technologies in a short period of time, without a large cash outlay. Cloud services provide all these organizations with convenient, on-demand access to a common pool of configurable computing resources: networks, servers, security, storage, applications, and services. With a cloud implementation, an organization can tap the compute power available over the Internet, reaping the advantages of data center consolidation and shared public and private resources. Moreover, users can access virtualized, productivity-boosting services that were previously unavailable to them. In fact, virtualization is currently a major driver of cloud deployment across all sectors. Clouds allow even small public sector organizations in local communities to innovate in ways that would not be possible were they forced to rely entirely on their own resources. Cities can share resources across a region, and agencies can collaborate across jurisdictions. These entities can move forward to take advantage of cloud technologies in a short period of time, without a large cash outlay of hiring internal IT staff to maintain in-house infrastructure. In addition, cloud deployments give large provider networks the ability to strengthen relationships with referring physicians and patients. 6. Cost Reduction and Control The public sector is under intense pressure to cut costs without undercutting critical services. Cloud computing can reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) both directly and indirectly. Facilities consolidation: Many organizations are attracted to cloud computing by the savings that come from consolidatingtheir data centers. Resources that can be pooled include storage, compute, memory, and network bandwidth. Inaddition, because cloud services are largely locationindependent, organizations can save on real estate and energycostsand reduce their carbon footprint at the same time. Labor 179

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optimization: Because a cloud deployment does not require as much provisioning, software development, or maintenance as a conventional infrastructure, organizations can make better use of valuable ICT expertise by redirecting the workforce from routine operational and maintenance duties to mission-critical tasks. Asset utilization: Many of todays public sector data centers are characterized by relatively poor asset utilization (often as low as 25 percent). There is also considerable duplication of equipment and effort across agencies and departments. When they can share applications, storage, and compute power, organizations do not have to build for peak usage that rarely occurs. Furthermore, they do not have to rely solely on the resources they own. Capital expenditure (CapEx) reduction: Cloud computing represents a pay-as-you go approach to ICT, rather than an incremental capital expenditure approach. Initial expenditures are comparatively low. Operating expenses go up or down depending on usage, so cash flow matches TCO. Additional investments are made only when they are needed. Measured services: A cloud implementation can automatically control and optimize resources by metering services. This makes it easier for managers to track expenses, establish charge-backs, and integrate cost controls into their future plans. Multiple payment models are possible, including pay for use, subscription, and fixed plans. Improved Agility and Adaptability: As the pace of technology quickens, ICT specialists are looking for network solutions that enable them to react quickly, innovate smoothly and efficiently, and keep growing pains to a minimum. Cloud computing can often make change less burdensome and expensive. Virtualized resources: Virtualization may add a new level of complexity, but the benefits include improved agility and additional options for future enhancements. For example, as workforces become increasingly mobile, virtualized desktops allow them to do their work anywhere, on a variety of personal devices. Virtual machines are not tied to particular servers, so they can migrate among physical devices and across geographies. Simple scalability: With bandwidth-hungry applications proliferating, the networks traffic keeps increasing, even if the number of users stays the same. With a cloud platform, managers can add capacity on demand without having to determine requirements beforehand or go through many of the traditional procurement, provisioning, and implementation processes. Load fluctuations are less of a problem when capacity can be added almost instantly. Of course, ICT groups still need to maintain robust network infrastructures regardless of which cloud models they implement. Elastic services: The cloud approach makes it easier for organizations to expand or contract services quickly by tapping into shared pools of resources or implementing prepackaged capabilities developed by third parties specifically for clouds. Furthermore, private cloud deployments using multitenant servers mitigate the server sprawl that often accompanies growth. Fast deployment: With software vendors increasingly delivering their products preinstalled in virtual machines, much of the traditional installation and configuration work associated with software deployment may not be necessary for a cloud implementation. Increased flexibility: The variety of cloud deployment and service models ensures that implementations can be aligned closely with business needs and ICT strategies. Many public sector organizations are choosing a hybrid cloud approach that lets them benefit from both private and public clouds. 180

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For a significant number of ICT decision makers today, cloud computing is a catalyst, if not a prerequisite, for innovation and transformation. The cloud approach is an important component in many e-governance, education, and healthcare strategies worldwide. Cloud computing can greatly benefit public sector organizations of all types and sizes by: - Reducing costs and controlling costs: Consolidate facilities, optimize human capital, utilize assets efficiently, reduce CapEx, meter and charge for services. - Improving agility and adaptability: Virtualize resources, increase capacity with simple scalability, expand or contract services to meet demand, deploy software quickly, expand flexibly to meet needs. - Enhancing services and collaboration: Take advantage of leading-edge applications, provide broad access for stakeholders, improve collaboration. - Addressing risk issues: Maintain critical service levels, help ensure resilience, choose cloud computing options that meet security and privacy requirements. According to survey results, top drivers for cloud computing implementations include business continuity, flexibility, better customer service, waste reduction, innovation, and the need for real-time information. The impetus for adopting a cloud approach comes from all parts of public sector organizations, but there is some concern about network readiness. By selecting their cloud models wisely and aligning them closely with their organizations business model, public sector ICT decision makers can deploy an effective, economical solution, while also successfully addressing reliability, data management, and security issues. Each organization needs to plan its own path to cloud computing. Now implementing cloud computing to e-governance raises many questions. That process may include answering fundamental questions such as: - How often does our organization need to change? - What new operational models do we need to implement? - What constraints are keeping us from fully utilizing the current infrastructure? - What are the benefits and limitations of clouds for our process? - What is the expected impact on our costs and budget? - What aspects of the organizations budgeting and procurement process will need to change? - Which regulations and compliance requirements do we need to meet? - What is our tolerance for risk? - How should we accommodate the legacy ICT infrastructure? - Which applications should move to a cloud? - How much technology independence do we require? - How much control do we want to retain over the infrastructure? - What aspects of our organizations culture will need to change? - How can our operations become more environmentally friendly? - How does cloud computing fit into our overall strategy? 7. Mobile Governance The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) of the Government of India takes a holistic view of eGovernance initiatives across the country, integrating them into a collective vision. Around this idea, a massive countrywide infrastructure reaching down to the remotest of villages is being developed, and large-scale digitization of records is taking place to enable easy and reliable access over the internet. The ultimate objective is to bring public services closer home to the populace, as articulated in theVision Statement of NeGP: "Make all Government services accessible to the common man in his locality,

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through common service delivery outlets, and ensure efficiency, transparency, and reliability of such services at affordable costs to realise the basic needs of the common man". As an extension of this vision, and in cognizance of the vast mobile phone subscriber base of over 870 million in the country, the Government has decided to also provision for access of public services through mobile devices, thereby establishing mobile Governance (m-Governance) as a compelling new paradigm within the ethos of e-Governance. The m-Governance framework of Government of India aims to utilize the massive reach of mobile phones and harness the potential of mobile applications to enable easy and Round-the-clock access to public services, especially in the rural areas. The framework aims to create unique infrastructure as well as application development ecosystem for m-Governance in the country. Government of India will progressively adopt and deploy m-Governance in a timebound manner to ensure inclusive delivery of public services to both the urban and rural populace in the country in accordance with this framework. The following are the main measures laid down: Web sites of all Government Departments and Agencies shall be made mobile-compliant, using the One Web approach. Open standards shall be adopted for mobile applications for ensuring the interoperability of applications across various operating systems and devices as per the Government Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance. Uniform/ single pre-designated numbers (long and short codes) shall be used for mobilebased services to ensure convenience. 8. Implementation Strategy And Framework The initiative of the Government of India for this framework stems from the realization that globally as well as in India, millions of less-privileged individuals without access to the Internet have no realistic chance of accessing Government/ public services. Additionally, at the time of conceptualizing the eGovernance strategies globally, the penetration of mobile devices was very low and the capabilities of the devices to carry out data transactions were minimal. However, the scenario has changed completely during the last decade, both in terms of the penetration of mobile devices as well as their computing capabilities. Given the fact that majority of Indian citizens reside in rural areas, mobile devices are ideally suited as alternative access and delivery channels for public services in these areas. It is important to mention here that m-Governance is currently evolving, not only in developing countries but also in the developed world. The success of the proposed initiative on m-Governance will greatly depend upon the ability of the Government Departments and Agencies to provide frequently needed public services to the citizens, create infrastructure for anytime anywhere mobile-based services, adopt appropriate open standards, develop suitable technology platforms, make the cost of services affordable, and create awareness, especially for people in underserved areas. To ensure the adoption and implementation of the framework in a time-bound manner, following actions will be taken: 1. Creation of Mobile Services Delivery Gateway (MSDG) MSDG is the core infrastructure for enabling the availability of public services through mobile devices. This will be developed and maintained by an appropriate agency within DIT. MSDG is proposed to be used as a shared infrastructure by the Central and State Government Departments and Agencies at nominal costs for delivering public services through mobile devices. Various channels, such as voice, text (e-mail and SMS), GPRS, USSD, SIM Toolkit (STK), Cell Broadcast (CBC), and multimedia (MMS) will be incorporated to ensure that all users are able to access and use the mobile based services. The 182

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various delivery channels are expected to entail innovative ways of providing existing services as well as development of new services. To ensure successful implementation of the platform with requisite levels of security and redundancy, following actions will be taken: - End User Interface: End-user devices include landline phones, mobile phones, smart phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), tablets, and laptops with wireless infrastructure. Mobile applications developed shall take into consideration appropriately the wireless-device interface issues, such as bandwidth limitations, micro-browser and micro-screen restrictions, memory and storage capacities, usability, etc. - Content for Mobile Services: Due to lower-bandwidth and smaller-screen characteristics of mobile devices, successful development and deployment of m-Governance will require development of separate mobile-ready content. Similarly, to meet the needs of all the potential users, the applications will need to be developed. - Mobile Applications (Apps) Store: A mobile applications (m-apps) store will be created to facilitate the process of development and deployment of suitable applications for delivery of public services through mobile devices. The m-apps store shall be integrated with the MSDG and it shall use the MSDG infrastructure for deployment of such applications. It is proposed that the store will be based upon service oriented architecture and cloud based technologies using open standards as far as practicable. The open platform will be developed and deployed in conjunction with the MSDG for making the additional value added services available to the users irrespective of the device or network operator used by them. - Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for Value-Added Services (VAS) providers: MSDG shall offer suitable APIs to VAS providers with appropriate terms and conditions to ensure interoperability and compliance with standards for development of applications for delivery of public services. - Mobile-Based Electronic Authentication of Users: For electronic authentication of users for mobile-based public services, MSDG shall incorporate suitable mechanisms including Aadhaarbased authentication. This will also help in ensuring appropriate privacy and confidentiality of data and transactions. - Payment Gateway: MSDG shall also incorporate an integrated mobile payment gateway to enable users to pay for the public services electronically. g) Participation of Departments: The Government Departments and Agencies both at the Central and State levels will be encouraged to offer their mobile-based public services through the MSDG to avoid duplication of infrastructure. 2. Creation of Mobile Governance Innovation Fund Department of Information Technology (DIT) shall create a Mobile Governance Innovation Fund to support the development of suitable applications by Government Departments and Agencies and also by third-party developers including start-ups. The fund shall be created and managed by DIT for a minimum period of 3 years. The objective of this fund will be to accelerate the development and deployment of the mobile applications across the entire spectrum of public services. 3. Creation of Knowledge Portal and Knowledge Management Framework on Mobile Governance DIT shall develop and deploy a state-of-the-art knowledge portal and knowledge management framework that acts as a platform for awareness generation and dissemination for various Central Government Ministries and the State Governments. This will enhance the absorptive as well as the service provision capabilities of various stakeholders in m-Governance. Since m-Governance is in its nascent stage both in India and globally, the knowledge portal will act as a reference and guide for Government Departments and Agencies in India.

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4. Creation of Facilitating Mechanism An appropriate facilitating mechanism will be created to ensure compliance with the standards for mobile applications and ensure seamless interoperability of services and implementation of short and long codes for public services across multiple service providers. The proposed mechanism shall be established and managed by the Department of Information Technology, Government of India. 9. Conclusion E-Government is to be able to offer an increased portfolio of public services to citizens in an efficient and cost effective manner. E-government allows for government transparency. Government transparency is important because it allows the public to be informed about what the government is working on as well as the policies they are trying to implement. Simple tasks may be easier to perform through electronic government access. Many changes, such as marital status or address changes can be a long process and take a lot of paper work for citizens. Egovernment allows these tasks to be performed efficiently with more convenience to individuals. E-government is an easy way for the public to be more involved in political campaigns. It could increase voter awareness, which could lead to an increase in citizen participation in elections. It is convenient and cost-effective for businesses, and the public benefits by getting easy access to the most current information available without having to spend time, energy and money to get it. References 1. Deloitte Research Public Sector Institute At the Dawn of e-Government: The Citizen as Customer, 2010 2. Gartner Group, Key Issues in E-Government Strategy and Management, Research Notes, Key Issues, 23 May 2008 3. Koh, C.E., Prybutok, V.R. "The three-ring model and development of an instrument for measuring dimensions of egovernment functions", Journal of Computer Information Systems 4. Mary Maureen Brown. "Electronic Government" Jack Rabin (ed.). Encyclopedia of Public Administration and Public Policy, Marcel Dekker,2003.pp.427-432 5. Sinrod, Eric J. "A look at the pros and cons of e-government". USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/ericjsinrod/2004-06-30-sinrod_x.htm. Retrieved 200803-01.

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Conceptual Model of citizens intention to use municipal web portal services: Citizens Perspective
P. Devika 1 * and N. Mathiyalagan1 ABSTRACT Development of web portals is an important e-government initiative for rendering public services in a more efficient and transparent manner. Citizen centric approach is needed for successful implementation of e-government portal. National, State and Local governments in India, have started to provide web based e-services to the citizens. Understanding the citizens needs, their perceptions and intentions towards egovernment services would help the government at all levels to improve the delivery of web portal services. The paper proposes a conceptual framework that shows how various factors would affect the citizens intension to use municipal web portal services. Based on the review of previous studies on technology acceptance models and e- government adoption factors, the paper formulates the framework containing the factors to be analysed to identify the citizens expectations, intentions and level of adoption of local government web portal services. This framework would guide the local administration to improve the quality of the services delivered and efficiency of the web portals. Keywords: E-government, web portals, e-services, adoption, conceptual framework. 1. Introduction E-Government uses new technologies to improve the access to government information and services and better the quality of the public services. E-government refers to the processes and structures needed to deliver electronic services to the public (citizens and businesses) and e-governance is defined as the application of electronic means in (1) the interaction between government and citizens and government and businesses, as well as (2) in internal government operations to simplify and improve democratic, government and business aspects of Governance (Backus, 2001). Indian governments at all level have established e-government web portals to provide anytime, anywhere delivery of citizen services. But the level of e-government development and adoption is low due to reasons such as huge population, large geographical area, inadequate infrastructure and human capital. India was ranked 119 in world e- government development ranking. Developing countries like India require far greater efforts to provide government e-services to the citizens than nations with high Gross National Incomes, small geographical areas and lesser population (United Nations E-Government Survey 2012). Effective, adaptable and inclusive framework to support the communications requirements of the government and to improve the overall quality of the communication products, systems and services are needed to enhance the efficiency of e- governance in the country (Pandey, Kapil, & Garg, 2012). Although many countries have built integrated web portals, providing effective e-government services through the portals is still a major question (Holzer & Manoharan, 2007). The common goal of government web portals is to render 24 x 7 public access to government information, deliver public services electronically, facilitate on line transaction, provide access to various government agencies and offer multiple channels for citizen participation.
1

PSG College of Arts and Science, Coimbatore, India *Corresponding Author: (Email: vikram.devika1@gmail.com)

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2. Background of the study Government of India approved the National e-governance Plan (NeGP) in 2006. Under NeGP, 27 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) were implemented to achieve complete transparency and more accountability particularly in citizen centric services (Shah, 2007). The development administration of urban areas in the Indian districts is coordinated by the urban local bodies called as Municipalities. Basic public services for urban citizens are provided by municipalities. Bagga and Gupta (2009) stated that National Mission Mode Project for municipalities is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of municipal services delivered to the citizens. The municipal web portals integrate various local government departments to provide the following services. - Registration and issue of birth and death certificate. - Payment of property tax, utility bills and management of utilities that come under urban local bodies. - Grievences and suggestion. - Building plan approvals. - Procurement and monitoring of projects. E-procurement Project/ ward works - Health programs. Licenses Solid waste management - Accounting system. - Personal Information system. - Grievence handling, including Right to Information Act, Acknowledgement, Resolution monitoring. - Waste Management Service Identifying the major factors that determine the citizens adoption of the e-services provided through municipal web portals is important to deliver information and services relevant to public demands. Egovernment portals should be based on citizen-centric approach to meet the needs of citizens and facilitate usage of e-services (Pandey & Geetika, 2008; Verma & Mishrab, 2010). 3. Objective of the paper The objective of this paper was to propose a conceptual framework that could be used for understanding factors that would impact citizens intention towards municipal web portal services. The paper analysed the various constructs used in the previous studies and identified the major constructs used to study the egovernance adoption. A conceptual framework was developed based on the analysis. The framework could be used to study the end users intention to adopt public services provided by the municipal government web portals. 4. Literature Review Models of technology acceptance such the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), Technology Acceptance Model, Innovation Diffusion Theory and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model gives an in-depth understanding on the citizens intention to adopt new technologies such as web portal e-services. Constructs from these models were used in several e-governance adoption studies. AlSaghier, Ford, Nguyen and Hexel (2009) used constructs of TAM and other constructs from earlier studies and proposed a conceptual model of citizens trust in e-governance that consisted of nine theoretical constructs such as Intention to engage in e-governance, Trust in e-government, Disposition to trust, Familiarity, Institution-based trust, Perceived website quality, Perceived Usefulness (PU), Perceived 186

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Ease of Use (PEOU) and Perceived Risk. These constructs were observed to affect citizens trust in egovernment where perceived risk moderated the relation between trusting belief and intention to trusting behavior. Perceived risks decreased when Trust in e-government increased and Trust made citizens comfortable to share personal information and do online government transaction. Mofleh andWanous (2008) conducted an online survey with 660 Jordanian respondents and identified that Trust in Government, Trust in the Internet and Compatibility, were significant in determining the citizens adoption of e-Government services in Jordan. A model of e-government trust composed of disposition to trust, institution-based trust (IBT), characteristic-based trust (CBT) and perceived risk was proposed and survey instrument was constructed based on the model. The survey results indicated that disposition to trust positively affected IBT and CBT trusts, which in turn influenced intention of citizens of United States to use e-government service. CBT trust also negatively affected perceived risk, which affects usage intention as well (Belanger & Carter, 2008). Another survey in United States through online proved that the citizens continual usage of e-government websites was predicted by trust. Perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use were also found to have significant positive effects on citizens continual usage intention towards e-government websites (Chee-Wee, Benbasat, & Cenfetelli, 2008). Socio psychological characteristics of the audience namely perceived usefulness, perceived uncertainty, and civic mindedness affected the adoption of e-government services. The perceived usefulness of the governmental web site was influential in the adoption of e-government services and perceived risk tolerance was only significant for transactional use. The general reason for non adoption was that the governmental web site does not offer relevant services for the citizens (Dimitrova & Chen, 2006). A cross-sectional study in Jordan demonstrated the significant positive effect of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and perceived information quality on the intension of the Jordanians to use egovernment for gathering information and conducting transactions. Using the e-government differed in terms of age, level of education but neither computer experience nor internet experience made any differences. The study also recommended the provision of sufficient and high level information by the egovernment website that would help in building trust between citizens and the e-government system and increase the intention to use particularly to conduct transaction (Almahamid, Mcadams, Kalaldeh, & AlSaeed, 2010). The attitude towards e-government was a critical factor that determined the decision of ordinary citizens to adopt or not adopt e-government services. The attitude was mainly a function of factors namely perceived benefits, perceived ease of use and perceived risk. The level of intrusiveness information requested by e-government service providers affected the perceived risk while facilitating conditions like the availability of technical support services had a positive influence on perceived ease of use (Mpinganjira, 2012). Perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use were significant determinants of intention to use government e-services. Internet safety perception and perceived ease of use influenced perceived usefulness which in turn influenced intention to use. Compatibility and image were insignificant predictors of perceived usefulness (Phang, Sutanto, Li, & Kankanhalli, 2005). Alomari, Sandhu and Woods (2010) explored the factors related to e-government adoption by the citizens in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Website design, beliefs, perceived usefulness, complexity, trust in egovernment and trust in government were found to be the major factors related to e-government adoption by the citizens. The analysis also revealed that internet and computer skill confidence, perceived ease of use, relative advantage, and attitudes were weak predictor. Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, and Davis (2003) formulated Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model, with four core determinants of intention and usage namely performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions and four moderators such as gender, age, experience, voluntariness of use. UTAUT model accounted for 70 percent of the variance (adjusted R2) in usage intention. A study in Qatar identified that effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions of UTAUT model factors were determinants of Qatar citizens behavioral intention towards e-government. However, performance expectancy had no significant effect. In addition, the egovernment adopters significantly differed in terms of gender, age and education (Al-Shafi & 187

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Weerakkody, 2010). Age, gender, experience and voluntariness of use were also the factors that affected the adoption of government e-services by Iran's public organizations (Shajari & Ismail, 2011). Performance expectancy/perceived usefulness, effort expectancy/perceived ease of use, social influence and facilitating conditions in Mauritius were related to e-government uptake. Also, Trust in the internet and previous experience of e-government services were significant predictors (Vencatachellum & Pudaruth, 2010). The determinants of Malaysian users acceptance of e-government were perceived usefulness, ease of use, compatibility, interpersonal influence, external influence, self efficacy, facilitating conditions, attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and intention to use e-government services/system (Suki & Ramayah, 2010). UTAUT model without the moderators was used to investigate the factors that influence the uptake of e-government services in Pakistan. The survey results showed that ease of use, usefulness, social influence, technological issues, lack of awareness, data privacy, and trust were the factors of e-government services adoption (Ahmad, Markkula, & Oivo, 2012). Wangpipatwong, Chutimaskul and Papasratorn (2005) explored that the characteristics of information quality and system quality significantly influence the adoption of e-government websites. Agrawal, Shah, and Wadhwa (2007) proposed a comprehensive model and measurement instruments to measure egovernance onlineservice quality (EGOSQ). The study aimed at understanding perceptions of egovernance web portal (esevaonline. com) users in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. The results showed that users considered reliability, resourceful and utility aspects to assess the quality of EGOSQ. Reliability included protection of personal information and privacy, performing tasks within the expected time frame, easy and fast navigation and availability of 24X7 online-services. Resourceful dimension constituted attributes such as regular update of information and provision of useful information. Users expected the websites to be resourceful to meet their needs. The utility consisted of availability of online contact options, friendly and considerate interaction by government employees, availability of various services through a single website and customized features to the users need. An integrated model of user satisfaction and technology acceptance was developed by Lai and Pires (2010) and the empirical testing of the model identified four success factors such as information quality, system quality, perceived effectiveness and social influence which impacted user satisfaction with the e-Government website and influenced intention to reuse. In addition, results of the online survey of 464 online users of Macaos egovernment portal provided evidence that information quality, system quality and social influence (but not perceived effectiveness) were success factors influencing user satisfaction and adoption. Easier navigation was likely to facilitate satisfaction and reuse. The study recommended that the government portal management should ensure ease-of-use, currency, accuracy of the supplied information and timely information update. 5. Research Design Initially, the paper reviewed the literature on technology acceptance models and e-government adoption factors and then analysed the theories adapted, research models and the constructs used. Based on the analysis, the paper explored the main factors that could be used to explain intention to use e-government web portal services by the citizens and then proposed a conceptual framework that shows how the identified factors influence the citizens intention to use the e- services rendered by municipalities through the web portals. The framework illustrates the relationships between the factors and presents citizens perspective on adoption. 6. Conceptual Framework The paper proposed a conceptual framework (Fig. 1) that integrated Technology Acceptance Model TAM, Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT) and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model and other relevant constructs from the literature to explain the factors that would determine the citizens intention towards e-government services. Trust, Demographical factors, Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Perceived Risk, Website Quality, Social influence and Facilitating 188

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Conditions were the independent variables and Intension to Use Municipal Web Portal Services depends on the independent variables in the framework. Trust Trust plays a pivotal role in e-government adoption (Ayyash, Ahmad, & Singh, 2012, AlSaghier et al., 2009). The construct consists of trust in government and trust in internet. Government transparency, the desire (benevolence) and ability (competence) of the government to provide citizen-centered information were the factors that helped to build trust in Jordan government (Mofleh & Wanous, 2008). Trust in government is created when citizens believe that the government agencies have the ability to provide reliable e-services and also have technical resources necessary to ensure security and privacy. Trust in the internet, is an important factor of e-government adoption. Citizens must believe that the internet is dependable and information provided through e-government website would be accurate and also the website could be used to conduct secured transactions. Belanger and Carter (2008) stated that citizens trust in government bodies and in internet were major factors that effected adoption and lack of trust was a hurdle for the citizens adoption of e-government services. So government should enhance its ability to provide public services via the Internet and must also ensure that the right mechanism was in place to provide safe environment for using e- services. Chee-Wee, Benbasat and Cenfetelli (2008) remarked that trust was crucial in driving citizens acceptance of public e-services. During transaction process, citizens treat e-government website as another human so government websites should be designed to exhibit the trustworthiness. H1. Trust would influence the citizens intention to use municipal web portal services.

Fig. 1 Proposed Conceptual Framework. Demographic Factors Age, gender, education level and income were the demographic factors considered in the proposed conceptual framework. Previous studies by Al-Shafi & Weerakkody (2010) and Almahamid et al. (2010) revealed that age, gender and education level affected the use of e-government website services. Income was positively related to the use of online government services (Chen & Dimitrova, 2006). Education was the most significant factor, people with high education level perceived that the government websites provided more information. Age considerably effected the decision to adopt e-government. Younger

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citizens were more open to the idea of using e-government services than older citizens (Colesca & Dobrica, 2008). H2. Demographic factors (Age, gender, education level) would affect the citizens intention to use municipal web portal services. Perceived Usefulness Perceived Usefulness is the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would enhance his or her job performance (Davis, 1989). People would prefer e-government services over traditional services because of convenience of access, reduction in time, cost and effort, and efficient service delivery. Eservices delivered by the government web portals must be genuinely useful to the intended users and should meet their specific needs (AlAwadhi & Morris, 2009). They must also feel that they could perform various activities such as downloading forms, paying bills, contacting officials etc through the portal. Public should perceive that the web portal services help them to save time and cost as they are able to get information needed, contact the government agencies and conduct transaction with various government departments without going to the concerned departments, not standing in queues and without any travel expenses. Since perceived usefulness is considered the most significant factor, government should continue developing the websites which possess a competitive advantage (i.e. cost advantage and differentiation advantage) over the traditional way of services and publicize this advantage to the public. The citizens understanding of these benefits will increase their intention to continue using e-government websites (Wangpipatwong, Chutimaskul, & Papasratorn, 2008). Perceived usefulness exhibited direct effect on intention to use government e- services (Zafiropoulos, Karavasilis, & Vrana, 2012). The perceived usefulness of the governmental web site was found influential in the adoption of egovernment services and was a strong predictor of intention to use the same (Dimitrova & Chen, 2006, Suki & Ramayah, 2010, Vencatachellum & Pudaruth, 2010). Users would perceive e-government service useful when the services are associated to intrinsic characteristics, interest and working style of the users. People would use e-government web portals if they enable them to complete their task effective and efficiently. H3. Perceived usefulness would affect the citizens intention to use municipal web portal services. Perceived Ease of Use Perceived ease of use is the degree to which a person believes that using a system would be free of effort (Davis, 1989). E-government web portal need to be easy to use so that all potential users, with or without internet experience, benefit from the e-services provided by the portal (AlAwadhi & Morris, 2009).When users feel that they could easily use or could learn to use the e-government website and eservices without much effort, they would intent to adopt the webportal. Higher level of perceived ease of use increases the level of intention to use the eservices and significantly affected adoption of egovernment services (Almahamid et al., 2010, Suki & Ramayah, 2010 ). Developing e-government websites that are easy to use would increase the continuance intention to use the websites. Easier the system, people usage increases. Easy use of web portal increases the perceived usefulness of the same. Expert support and training programs to increase citizens ability to use internet would result in better and positive perception regarding the usage of e-government services (Wangpipatwong et al., 2008). Perceived ease of use helps to develop positive attitude towards e-government services. H4. Perceived ease of use would affect the citizens intention to use municipal web portal services. Perceived Risk Perceived risk could be defined as the risk of exposing and losing personal information through online interaction. Perceived risk is associated with financial risk, performance risk as well as data security and privacy. Risk also relates to the perceived control over the e-governance process, as citizens are unaware 190

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how their personal information is being used (Kumar, Mukerji, Butt, & Persaud, 2007). Perceived risk is a crucial factor in determining adoption of e- government web portal services (AlSaghier et al., 2009). The perceived risk is very high when users provide personal information and conduct transaction. Provision of services using the internet is often associated with high risk. Stories of criminals hacking into online sites of reputable organizations are common (Mpinganjira, 2012). Raising trust and diminishing perceived risk are major steps towards successful e-governance (Zafiropoulos et al., 2012). It is very important that risk aspects such as privacy and security are thoroughly examined and addressed by the government in order to ensure safety of the personal information provided by the users and to enable secure transaction (Colesca, 2009). H5. Perceived risk would have an effect on the citizens intention to use municipal web portal services. Website Quality Quality of the web portal influences the citizens intension to use the e- services of the same. To explain the web portal quality, the paper considered the attributes of system quality and information quality. Information quality and system quality were significant factors that influenced the adoption of egovernment websites (Wangpipatwong et al., 2005). System quality mainly relates to the engineeringoriented performance characteristics of the system and information quality refers to the quality of the information system output (Agrawal et al., 2007). Decision to gather information and use e-service depends on information quality (Kaisara & Pather, 2009). Information quality refers to the quality of the information produced by the system as well as to the degree this information output aligns with the needs of the users on the basis of accuracy, reliability, relevance, completeness and precision of information. The system quality is the measurement of the actual systems production of output. In a framework proposed by Ayyash et al., (2012), the system quality of the web portal consisted of accessibility, reliability, usability and efficiency. Information quality included the aspects of accuracy, timeliness, relevancy, precision and completeness (Ayyash et al., 2012). The system quality, accessibility is the degree to which citizens have equal access to the website and is important to the design of the website. People with special needs must be considered while designing and developing a web portal. Accessibility could be increased by providing various language options, fonts, links, audio support and search options (Chander & Kush, 2012). Reliability is the extent to which the service provided by an e-government web site would be accurate and dependable and citizens would complete the tasks at the promised time. Reliability refers to user friendliness which is based on content layout, website structure, user interface web site appearance and visual design, clarity and search facilities (Bhattacharya, Gulla, & Gupta, 2007). Efficiency is the most significant factor (Wangpipatwong et al., 2005). Efficiency of the website is to provide all the services needed by the citizens at one stop, that could be received easily and there by helps the citizen save time and expence. Accuracy of the webportal information is considered high only if the information is free from errors. Webportals must provide timely information and should be updated regularly(Wangpipatwong et al., 2005). Based on the needs of the portal users, relevant information must be provided. Precision of the information relates to richness of information, the easy readable and understandable information. Precision is achieved by giving detailed information, using simple words and sentences and coherent presentation. Completeness refers to the adequacy of information. Government web portals should provide information for the users so that they understand the working of government agencies thus helping to promote e-governance. (Bhattacharya et al., 2007).

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H6. Website Quality would have an effect on the citizens intention to use municipal web portal services. Social influence and Facilitating Conditions Social influence is defined as the degree to which an individual perceives that important others believe he or she should use the new system. Social influence is similar to subjective norm in Theory of Reasoned Actions (TRA), Technology Acceptance Model 2 (TAM2), Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), social factors in Model of PC Utilisation (MPCU), and image in Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT). Though these constructs have different labels, they contain the notion that the individuals behavior is influenced by the way in which they believe others will view them as a result of having used the technology. Facilitating conditions are defined as the degree to which an individual believes that an organizational and technical infrastructure exists to support use of the system. This construct is similar to the constructs: perceived behavioral control (TPB), facilitating conditions (MPCU), and compatibility (IDT) (Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, & Davis, 2003). Social influence and facilitating conditions determined citizens use of e-government services. Positive messages by the social networks like families, friends and colleagues would influence the citizens behavioural intention to adopt the e-government system (Al-Shafi & Weerakkody, 2010). If individuals think that using web portal services would enhance their reputation with peers they would intent to use the web portal (Mahadeo, 2009). Facilitating conditions elaborates on the necessary environment and whether help is available for the usage of e-government services or not. So establishing proper infrastructure and user interface, assistance and effective guidelines would influence the acceptance of the e-services (Al-Shafi & Weerakkody, 2010). H7. Social influence would affect the citizens intention to use municipal web portal services. H8. Facilitating conditions would influence the citizens intention to use municipal web portal services. Intension to Use Intention to use would have a significant positive influence on usage of technology. Behavioural models such as TRA, TPB and TAM states that individuals readiness and willingness to perform a given behaviour would affect the actual behaviour. (Venkatesh et al., 2003). Intention is a strong predictor of behavior. Intension to use the webportal services would lead to the actual usage of the same. In the proposed framework, intension to use municipal webportal services was considered to depend on the factors such as trust, demographic factors, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived risk, website quality, social influence and facilitating conditions. 7. Conclusion Local administration provides necessary public services to the urban people through municipal web portals. Providing municipal services electronically through web portals involves huge investments. Development of web portal does not end with just designing and implementing the same. Municipalities should take necessary initiatives to enhance the citizens usage. Identifying the factors that affect the willingness of the public to adopt the e-services would help the local governments to improve their web portals based on these factors and to encourage more citizens to adopt the system. The proposed conceptual framework and identified factors could be used to know the citizens intention towards municipal web portal services. The paper indentified trust, demographical factors, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived risk, website quality, social influence and facilitating conditions as independent factors and citizens intention to use municipal web portal services depends on these factors.

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21. Colesca, S. E. (2009). Increasing E-Trust: A Solution to Minimize Risk in E-Government Adoption. Journal of Applied Quantitative Methods , 4 (1), 31-44. 22. Colesca, S. E., & Dobrica, L. (2008). Adoption And Use Of E-Government Services: The Case Of Romania. Journal of Applied Research and Technology , 6 (3), 204-217. 23. Davis, F. D. (1989). Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, and User Acceptance of Information. MIS Quarterly , 13 (3), 319-339. 24. Dimitrova, D. V., & Chen, Y.-C. (2006). Profiling the Adopters of E-Government Information and Services: The Influence of Psychological Characteristics, Civic Mindedness, and Information Channels. Social Science Computer Review , 24 (2), 172-188. 25. Holzer, M., & Manoharan, A. (2007). Global Trends in Municipal E-Government: An Online Assessment of Worldwide Municipal Web Portals. In A. Agarwal, & V. V. Ramana (Eds.), Foundations of E-government (pp. 178-188). 26. Kaisara, G., & Pather, S. (2009). e-Government in South Africa: e-service quality access and adoption factors. In P.v. Brakel (Ed.), Proceedings of the 11th Annual Conference on World Wide Web Applications. Port Elizabeth: CapePeninsula University of Technology. 27. Kamarulzaman, Y., & Azmi, A. A. (2010 ). Tax E-filing Adoption in Malaysia: A Conceptual Model. Journal of EGovernmentStudies and Best Practices , volume 2010, 1-6. 28. Kumar, V., Mukerji, B., Butt, I., & Persaud, A. (2007). Factors for Successful e-Government Adoption: aConceptual Framework. Electronic Journal of e-Government , 5 (1), 63 - 76. 29. Lai, C. S., & Pires, G. (2010). Testing of a Model Evaluating e-Government Portal Acceptance and Satisfaction. (E.Frisk, & K. Grunden, Eds.) Electronic Journal of Information Systems Evaluation , 13 (1), 35-46 . 30. Mahadeo, J. D. (2009). Towards an Understanding of the Factors Influencing theAcceptance and Diffusion of e-Government Services. Electronic Journal of e-Government , 7 (4), 391-402.10 31. Mofleh, S. I., & Wanous, M. (2008). Understanding Factors Influencing Citizens Adoption of eGovernment Services in the Developing World: Jordan as a Case Study. (H. A. Costa, Ed.) INFOCOMP Journal of Computer Science , 7 (2), 1-11. 32. Mpinganjira, M. (2012). Factors affecting adoption of e-government services: A conceptual model. African Journal of Business Management , 6 (11), 4245-4249. 33. Pandey, M. R., Kapil, M., & Garg, S. (2012). Beginning of an Effective E-Governance in India by using Informative and Communicative Mechanism. International Journal of Soft Computing and Engineering (IJSCE) , 2 (2), 107-109. 34. Pandey, N., & Geetika. (2008). Strategic Marketing of E-Government for Technology Adoption Facilitation. In J.Bhattacharya (Ed.), Critical Thinking in E-Governance (pp. 51-60). Secunderabad, Andhra Pradesh: Computer Society of India (CSI). 35. Patel, H., & Jacobson, D. (2008). Factors Influencing Citizen Adoption of E-Government: A Review and Critical Assessment. 16th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), (pp. 10581069.). Galway (Ireland). 36. Phang, C. W., Sutanto, J., Li, Y., & Kankanhalli, A. (2005). Senior Citizens Adoption of EGovernment:In Quest of the Antecedents of Perceived Usefulness. Proceedings of the Thirty-Eighth Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Hawaii, United States. 37. Rokhman, A. (2011). E-Government Adoption in Developing Countries; the Case of Indonesia. Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences , 2 (5), 228-236. 38. Shah, M. (2007, June). E-Governance in India: Dream or reality? International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology , 3 , 125-137. West Indies, South Africa. 39. Shajari, M., & Ismail, Z. (2011). Key Factors Influencing the Adoption of E-government in Iran. ICIC '11 Proceedings of the 2011 Fourth International Conference on Information and Computing (pp. 457-460). Washington,DC: IEEE Computer Society.

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40. Suki, N. M., & Ramayah, T. (2010). User Acceptance of the E-Government Services in Malaysia: Structural Equation Modelling Approach. (Z. Kovacic, Ed.) Interdisciplinary Journal of Information, Knowledge, and Management , 5, 395-413. 41. (2012). United Nations E-Government Survey 2012: E-Government for the People. Division for Public Administration and Development Management. United Nations. 42. Vencatachellum, I., & Pudaruth, S. (2010). Investigating E-Government Services Uptake in Mauritius: A Users Perspective. International Research Symposium in Service Management. Mauritius. 43. Venkatesh, V., Chan, F. K., & Thong, J. Y. (2012). Designing e-government services: Key service attributes and citizens preference structures. Journal of Operations Management , 30 (12), 116-133. 44. Venkatesh, V., Morris, M. G., Davis, G. B., & Davis, F. D. (2003). Users Acceptance Of Information Technology: Towards A Unified View. MIS Quarterly , 27 (3), 425-478. 45. Verma, N., & Mishrab, A. (2010). Indias Approach in Constructing One-Stop Solution Towards eGovernment. Journal of E-Governance , 33, 144156. 46. Wangpipatwong, S., Chutimaskul, W., & Papasratorn, B. (2005). Factors Influencing the Adoption of Thai eGovernment Websites:Information Quality and System Quality Approach. Special Issue of the International Journal of the Computer, the Internet and Management , 13 (3), 14.1-7. 47. Wangpipatwong, S., Chutimaskul, W., & Papasratorn, B. (2008). Understanding Citizens Continuance Intention to Use e-Government Website: a Composite View of TechnologyAcceptance Model and Computer Self-Efficacy. Electronic Journal of e-Government , 6 (1), 55-64.11 48. Zafiropoulos, K., Karavasilis, I., & Vrana, V. (2012). Assessing the Adoption of e-Government Services byTeachers in Greece. Future Internet , 4, 528-544. 49. (n.d.). Retrieved November Monday, 2012, from Government of Tamil Nadu website:http://www.tn.gov.in/district_statistics.html

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Adaption to change from District Magistrate to District Manager: Catalytic role of DM e-Dashboard Application (DMDA)
Gopal Meena 1 * ABSTRACT DMDA is an integrated platform that allows the district administration to collect, compile, customize and use entire range of governance key activities across all the departments in a single window environment through trigger reports. It helps in faster, easier and effective administration. The DM e-Dashboard envisages to retrieves data from a central database processes and re-engineer it in a user-friendly interface even suitable for novice users. The modular ERP architecture of the proposed solution allows the system to grow exponential for future needs without changing the core of the platform. DM e-Dashboard is one of the most comprehensive, effective, user-friendly and robust e-governance solution for the district administration.

Keywords: User-Selected Metrics, KPI (Key Performance Indicators), Trigger report, Data mining, egovernance and GPR (Government Process Re-engineering) 1. Historical Significance of the office of the District Collector The Collector or District Magistrate (DM) is supposed to be the kingpin of the administration at District level. He is expected to shoulder the responsibility of supervision and coordination of the work of all the government departments at the district level besides being the head of the Land Revenue Department at the district level. The office of Collector or District Magistrate owes its existence to the colonial regime when the British rulers envisaged an office which could represent the Crown in the field and for that purpose created this institution with very wide powers and authority. This was assisted in no small measure by the fact that the role of the government in those days mainly comprised of maintenance of law and order and to some extent relief in cases of natural calamity besides ensuring that the Land revenue is collected promptly since it was the major source of government revenues. The year between 1857 in 1909 witnessed a strong concentration of power in the hands of the collector. In him was created a little Napoleon who, being part and parcel of the steel frame, made it possible for the British to govern and control the vast sub-continent. Philip Woodruff in his account says that there was hardly anything that the collector could not do. Together with his official duties, he undertook tours, settled village-disputes, dealt with all problems of the district and yet found time for developmental activities. Simon commission remarked that the district collector is in the eyes of most of its inhabitants, the government while Ramsay Macdonald compared the district collector to a tortoise on whose backs stood the elephant of the government of India. Lord Wavel said that the English would be remembered not for this institution or that, but by the ideals left behind in the form of office of the district collector. 2. Changing Role of the Collector and emerging Challenges The office of the District Magistrate was adopted, as it is, in independent India also. With the increase in functions and responsibilities of the government as manifested in new technical departments overtime
1

District Magistrate, Siwan, Inida *Corresponding Author: (Email: gopalmeena.ias@gmail.com)

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besides a large number of para-statals and democratic de-centralisation in the form of Panchayati Raj institutions, rising political consciousness, emergence of civil society and pressure groups, new Acts/rules, increasing developmental responsibilities, the position of the office of District Magistrate has undergone a huge transformation. Although the collector is no longer the proverbial tortoise on whos back stood the giant elephant of the government, he still remains the leader at the district level. Undoubtedly this pivotal office has experienced ups and downs during the course of long history but a confident assertion of the Simon Commission still remains true that by whatever Constitution of India may be ruled, no government will be able to do without the District Collector The fact, however remains that the Collector is still the head of the Land Revenue and Records Department at the district level which functions directly under his control unlike the other departments of the government for which the Collector only has a co-ordinating role. The pre-eminent position of the district magistrate no more remains so even though he is called upon to discharge a co-ordinating function at the district level with respect to all the departments of the government existing at the district level. No doubt Collector's position has eroded over time due to many reasons but still he remains point of convergence for various government functionaries as well as the general public for co-ordinating the activity of various government departments as also for gauging the effect of policies and programmes pursued by the government of the day. In Bihar, the Collector is vested with powers under various enactments. He exercises powers, original and appellate under the following Acts/Statutes/Orders either himself or through his subordinate officers.
Bihar Acts Bihar Land Reforms Act Bihar Public Demand Recovery Act Bihar Land Ceiling Act Bihar Treasury Code Bihar Land Encroachment Act Bihar Land Acquisition Act Bihar Survey & Settlement Act Bihar Fixation of Ceiling Area and Acquisition of Surplus Land Act Bihar Land Dispute Resolution Act Bihar Finance Rules Bihar Fertiliser (Control) order 1956 Bihar Public Distribution Control Order 2001 Bihar khas Mahal Manual Bihar Tenancy Act Bihar Panchyati Raj Act. Central Acts Indian Registration Act.1889 Arms Act. Indian Explosives Act. Essential commodities Act Criminal Procedure Code Police Act/Bihar Police Rules. Probation of Offenders Act. Special Marriage Act, 1954. Payment of Wages act. Workmens Compensation Act. Indian Petroleum Act, 1934. MNREGA RTI Act 200 Human Rights Act SC/ST Atrocities Act Other Responsibilities as Head Red Cross Society Disaster Management Zila Sainik Kalyan Board Kendriya /Navodaya Vidhyalaya

Tables 1 The above list is merely illustrative and not exhaustive because there are a vast number of other Central and State statutes vesting some regulatory power or the other upon the Collector in his capacity as Collector or District Magistrate. An important aspect of the working of the Collector is that he is principal officer of the State government at the district level and supposed to supervise work of more than 45 departments and public grievances. 197

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So we can see that the role of collector has changed: - From Quantitative to qualitative - From status quo to people oriented - From Collector to Manger - From centralised to de-centralised - From non-participative to participative 3. Need of DM e-Dashboard? As evident from above discussion, that the DM is overburdened functionary and overworked with multifarious activities, most of the time busy in meeting, collecting & compiling reports, uploading on Google docs or application software, attending meetings, video conferences, protocol duties, handling law & orders problems, court work, filing affidavits and personal appearances in the High Court, Lokayaukta, RTI Commissioner office, SHRC/NHRC, etc. Supporting systems are not as per the roles and responsibilities. Huge Vacancies at grassroots level such as Panchyat Sachiv, Revenue Karmcharis, age and health profile of staff is not very encouraging. Political and judicial intervention in trivial administrative matters worsens situation. Demanding public who have huge expectations from the government, slow response of administrative machinery due to various reasons further aggravated law and order situation even for simple and trivial issues DMs are forced to deal with. This hardly leaves any time for him to concentrate on planned and developmental activities. Some departments are not reviewed for months due to hectic and busy schedule of the DM. Many a time scheduled review meetings postponed or delegated to other officials due to slippage of schedule or preoccupancy in other work. His day begins with fire-fighting and ends with it, he responds to those issues or officers who put pressure and follow regularly or have coercive power. There are departmental officials posted in the district for most of the departments. But Principal Secretaries are not able to supervise and control their respective departmental officials effectively. They look for even for smaller issues to the DM and expect him to deliver result in their departmental work. Democratic de-centralisation has also its demerit especially in Recruitment of Anganwadi Sevika and Teachers through PRIs without proper safeguards led to litigation, which instead of solving problem increased the burden of the DMs. Similarly in implementation of schemes by PRIs also has not yielded as desired result due to various reasons such 12th & 13th Finance Commission, BRGF, NREGA, IAY, etc. A large number of Schemes and Agencies led to compartmentalisation where left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. Some initiatives by the departments in e-governance have been in isolated fashion and can be safely called silos of success because these application softwares are with limited scope, keeping in view to meets its own requirements. But in government element of inter-dependence is indispensible. Even Today, a significant no of departments in Bihar collect Monthly Progress Reports (MPRs) from the districts either manually, by fax, email or at the most Google Docs without having analysis of previous months and future projections. In some departments multiple email ids or Google docs opened to collect different types of MPRs so that all reports dont get mixed up. The multifarious activities performed by the Collector make him almost indispensable but at the same time make him over-burdened functionary. It is the pivotal role of the Collector in the district administration that projects him as the principal co-ordinator and enables him to perform the task of co-ordination. Coordination is the dynamic area of bringing together the constituents of an organization in harmonious and active inter-relationship so that each in its turn would perform its assigned functions within the allotted time towards obtaining the anticipated total result of the whole.

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Therefore we need integrated e-Governance tools to enable DM to develop synergy, inter-departmental coordination, effective supervision and control over more than 50 odd departments. 4. What is DM e-Dashboard: Concept and Overview A car driver, an airbus pilot and the captain of a cruise ship, they all have a dashboard in front of them, with an impressing array of instruments that help them to take their decisions. It improves safety and efficiency Figure(s) 1. Likewise, the Captains of the Districts need tools to steer and lead to be effective, efficient, transparent and responsive to the demand of ecology, we have to use applications of e-governance. Today, challenge is to extract and present very specific metrics - intelligence for him from huge set of heterogeneous data to support his Strategic and Operational decision-making. DM e-Dashboard envisages to meet up the challenges of the role and responsibilities of the DM.

Figure(s)1. Aeroplane Dashboard

Figure(s) 2.Triggers alerts on KPIs

e-Dashboard is a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that organizes and presents information in a format that is easy to read and interpret. DM e-Dashboard is a Flexible, scalable and customizable web-based tool which traverses through the huge data and reports from manual and or automated systems of the various departments convert that raw data into knowledge and generate used defined triggers for the DM to effectively monitor. It extracts and presents very specific and vital metrics intelligence and delivers an instant snapshot of all the departments on real time basis in a single e-Dashboard. It also serves as a starting point from which the DM can get a sense of a birds eye view by reporting Key Performance Indicators to the DM on a daily, weekly and monthly basis before digging deeper into data. It is an intuitive, flexible, customizable, web-based Information System which allows to view critical metrics in a dashboard setting, with the ability to drill down within the dashboard and view those metrics at any level.

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Figure(s) 3. Architecture of DM e-Dashboard Applications (DMDA) DMDA envisages interface with the heterogeneous sources of data, from already operational application softwares in Government such as NregaSoft, AwasSoft, CTMIS, MCTS, E-court, i-WDMS (Integrated Work Flow & Document Management System), e-District, e-Procurement, RTPS, Jankari Call Centres, etc. and new Application Software to meet needs of the rest of departments reporting Figure(s) 3. Although the application is generic and will be used by District Administration in general, but will provide customized views and advanced tools for the oversight and monitoring all activities in the district to the District Magistrate in particular and other officers in general. DMDA will not only caters to the DM but also to all concerned officers who are related to particular KPIs and given access to them on need to know basis. A Customised trigger generated report filtered from the perspective of Principal Secretaries of concerned departments is also generated by using the same database. If required they can view detailed analysis and navigate from the e-Dashboard itself. Similarly Customised query based search options for the citizens to retrieve desired information easily available through a Citizens Portal which can be called Citizen e-Dashboard. Dashboard cannt be static as KPIs will change as per the schemes, season, crisis, disaster and level of achievement it has to adjust triggers accordingly. It is also intended to provide process GPR (Government Process Re-engineering) in government system by simplifying procedures, automation, tracking & monitoring and records management to the district administration. Each component or system in DM dashboard is aimed at providing process re-engineering and automation for routine work at the secretariat/collectorate. These systems contain numerous modules which cater to the various aspects of each system.

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5. List of Software Applications to be developed, Triggers and Alert in DM Dashboard

S No. 1 Depart- Key Indicators need to Trigger generated ment Monitored by the DM report in DMDA Educatio MDM should be No of Schools- where n operational in all schools food grain not available all the working Days; /Going to be over in a week Measures by the System Auto AlertsSMS/Email to the MDM Incharge, BEO,DEO, DM SFC, etc. Meausres by the DM If timely demand -supply chain is not maintainedreview, remind, sourt out problems. Remarks Already IVRS system is in place to data by the HMs

MDM should be operational in all schools all the working DaysLogistic Position Status

No of Schools where MDM closed due to Logistic- unavailability of Fund/cook/ Fuel/Kitchen Shed/Water/Teacher with period of duration

Auto AlertsSMS/Email to the MDM In-charge, BEO,DEO, DPO Accounts/SSA, etc.

Historical Analysis of Such schools where repeatedly such problems occur- plan Inspection/order Inquiry/Timely Arrangements of logistic/Proactive Plan Inquiries and Surprise Inspection, take feedback from PRIs and other institutions Plan Inquiries and Surprise Inspection, take feedback from PRIs and other institutions

Attendence-More 80%

than Find out DifferenceNumber of Registred Attenedance in Register-Actual in Class room Distribution of Schools-Lowest 50 Scholarship/Cycle/Unifo rm Financial and Physical No 7 List of slow Progress of Additional Progress work -Reason Classroom wise

Auto Alerts to HMs/BEOs/DEOs Auto Alerts to HMs/BEOs/DEOs Check MB Pendency, Fund flow to VSS, Payment, etc.

Health

JBSY Deliveries- Same No and List of non- Auto Alerts to Day Payment to Mothers Payment Cases Reason CS/MOIC/Health wise Managers; Detect Exceptional Cases/Doubtful cases; SMS to Birth Registrar Medicine Availability No and List of Medicine-Shortage Auto Work order/ Reminder; Regular OPD by All No of OPDs-Top20, Auto Reminders to Doctors Bottom 20 poor performers MCST -100% No and List of Poor ----same as above-Entry ANMs/PHCs -Routine Immunisation No and List of Poorest ----same as above-50 -Epedemic No of Cases of Dengue/JE Auto Alerts to MOICs/HMs/CS Stock of Blood Units Stock Position Auto Alerts to Redcross/ Civil Surgeon/ NGOs who facilitated blood donation camp

Cross Verify Payment from Cashbook/Asha-PresentAbsent/Use of Ambulance;

Purchase and get it distributed; Maintain Demand supply gap and avoid expiry of date

Test Facility/Medicine Availability/Preventive Measures

Timely Camp organisation etc.

etc.

etc.

etc.

etc.

Tables 2: A but subset of KPIs of Some Departments and Triggers 201

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DM e-Dashboard is a comprehensive solution in the form of numerous software applications and tools combined in a single package. Its primary objective is to provide the district administration with an advanced, integrated information sharing platform. In particular, the solution is aimed at providing information to District Magistrates and Collectors to bring issues that are critical urgently to their attention and allow them to take swift and informed decisions. The key objectives of the solution are: - Provide overall Situational Awareness to the District Magistrate and other officials. - To escalate urgent matters to official attention automatically. - Convergence of key information from whole the district at one place. - Interpret and represent the information in an accessible & understandable fashion. - Assist in analysis required for decision making. - To improve efficiency and efficacy of processes within the secretariat through process reengineering and automation. - To fulfill public service delivery and right to information obligations. The most significant attribute of DM e-Dashboard is its ability to gather information from distinct sources at one place under one solution, representing it in a way that the District Magistrate would like it. In order for information to be gathered and converged at one place, DM e-Dashboard requires that data be automatically fetched from existing solution databases by using software services. In the event where such systems may not exist, it is advisable to develop such systems to get data automatically. DM e-Dashboard, itself is a collection of application software and interfaces with the existing applications and develop new ones in areas where not available and provide holistic picture of all key parameters of the district (Figure 4)

Existing Portals& Software Applications likeIAY,ePDS etc

DMDashboard &Associated SoftwareTools &Applications

NewSoftware Applicationstobe developedforother systems

Figure 4 DM Dashboard Eco-system 6. Use of Data, Database, Data Analysis Tools and application of Data Mining Trigger Generated Reports in DM e-Dashboard As mentioned earlier, DM e-Dashboard is a comprehensive software solution that acts as a decision support system for the District Magistrate by providing convergence of information and facilitates sharing, interpretation, analysis and application of that data for useful purpose. As a tool, DM e-Dashboard has several features and functionalities that help District Magistrates plan and execute their responsibilities with ease. The following is a brief description of those features: - Customized View that allows easy navigation and simple user interface. - Tasks planning, meeting setup, scheduling, etc. - File management & administrative execution. - Oversight of projects and schemes in the district. - Escalation of critical issues automatically when they arise. - Active monitoring of critical issues until they are resolved - Information sharing and logging. Representation of data in both statistical and graphical formats.

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The DM e-Dashboard would allow the District Magistrate to view all key information in a single page view. The following tools would be available: File Manager The file manager would display the list of files awaiting the perusal of the DM. On mouse-over, basic detail about the file would be displayed. This detail will include subject, number of days since the file is pending and priority. Upon click, complete details of the file would show up. The DM would be able to view the file details like subject, movement history, comments from officials, attached documents etc. the DM would also be able to enter his/her comments on the same and attach documents if needed. Meeting & Task Planner The meeting & task planner will show the planned activities of the DM against the schedule. All tasks added or approved by the DM will be listed against a time-line. It will also maintain status of new, pending or closed items. The DM will be able to add/remove/modify tasks and set meetings. The same would reflect in the task plan or meeting schedule of other officials, who were added by the DM as stake holders. New tasks can be created and published. Project Manager The project manager would show a list of projects being executed under various schemes in the district. Incomplete or delayed projects would be shown on the top. On mouse-over, the basic details about the project would be displayed. Upon click, the summary details of the project would appear. The summary details would include schedule of the project, funds spent till that time, completion status, primary contractor details and officer in-charge. This data would be represented in statistical and graphical format for quick and easy understanding. Escalation Notifier The escalation notifier will highlight critical issues that need urgent attention of the DM. These issues could be related to any activity or happening in the district. Example, if there is a shortage of food grains in the district and the same has not been resolved by the Food and Civil Supplies office in stipulated time window, it would automatically escalate to the DM for his/her attention. The DM would be able to set targets/milestones for critical items in the district like supply chain issues for food grains, drugs, etc. or disease containment efforts etc. and also set a resolution time window for action by his sub-ordinate officers. The issues will automatically escalate when they fail to meet the target and resolution window. Issues may also be manually escalated by officers for the DMs attention. The escalation notifier would display the history of the critical issue, comments from officials, their actions and steps taken to contain or resolve it and other relevant data. District Statistics The district statistics would show the overall picture of the district in terms of both physical and welfare terms. The details for important items like infrastructure projects, health care, judicial cases, social welfare, food security, etc. would be shown in numerical and graphical format. Low performers will be highlighted in red. The statistics would be shown for a variety of socioeconomic indicators including but not limited to:

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Law and Order Health Services Education Food Security Physical Infrastructure Special Awareness Drives Sanitation and Cleanliness

Other information on the DM e-Dashboard would be daily news, weather information, official e-mail, and other facilities of small nature. Similar custom views would be developed for each official in the secretariat. They will be developed in a fashion that provides maximum information output in the most concise fashion with the least required input to the system. All information will be available to the officials at the click-of-a-mouse. 7. Benefits of Public, administrative personnel and administration leadership through DM eDashboard A) Public - Improved access to All Services to all citizens of district - Better and Quick delivery of services and information. - Improved communications and Simplification and Streamlining of procedures. - Opportunity for greater participation in decision-making. - Improved interaction with government at different levels. - Track the performance of all department of administration. B) Administrative Personnel - Automation of Departmental Functions and citizen services - Common information base across departments on a single integrated platform. - Better co-ordination between departments and agencies. - Improved communications. - Creation of effective management information system (MIS). - Better mobilization and utilization of resources. - Improvement in revenue collection. - Efficient citizen grievance redressal. - Overall improvement in governance, delivery services and citizen interface. - Real time monitoring and reporting. - Objectiveness in decision-making. - Single repository of data at State Data Center (SDC) which could be helpful for administrative purposes C) Administration leadership - Availability of standardized and meaningful MIS on timely basis across all departments. - Appropriate and timely analysis and decision-support mechanism. - Ability to monitor and track programs, services, and revenues effectively and on a timely basis.

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8. Conclusion Though Collectors influence and authority is shrinking, his areas of influence are growing. Working ecology is not favourable to the Collector in the light of wide range of responsibilities. In addition to other measures like re-engineering the government, maintaining balance in authority, responsibility and accountability of all concerned, role of e-governance is of utmost important. In Private Sector Executive Dashboards are in vogue and used as effective tool in planning, execution and timely corrective measures on the basis of Dashboard reports. In the age of LPG viz. Liberlisation, Privatisation, Globalisation and de-centralisation, Collector will have to become agent of change good governance and development administration at the very base of our democratic structure, then only he will be able to survive, as rightly said by Charles Darwin It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change. DM e-Dashboard Application will enable him to adapt to the changes and transform him from Dimstrict Magistrate to District Manager for him to face challenges with confidence as commander in full control of affairs. As a co-ordinator he only need to focus mainly on at-a-Glance Performance data and need to drill down when not as per desired KPIs and DM e-Dashboard facilitates this. It allows more effectively and efficiently executing on strategy, improving business processes and managing key metrics proactively. 9. Acknowledgement I owe a great many thanks to people who helped and supported me during the writing of this concept Paper. My deepest thanks to Dr. E.L.S.N. Bala Prasad, Director General, BIPARD (Bihar Institute of Public Administration and Rural Development) for his guidance and support. I also express my sincere thanks to Mr. Arun Kumar Singh, Principal Secretary (IT) for appreciating the idea of DM e-Dashboard Application and who promised to help me by providing financial support to implement it. Last but not the least, Md. Shahid Akhlaque, CEO Oglacs Software Pvt. Ltd, who helped me in writing this paper and provided technical inputs. References 1. Sriharsha Veeramachaneni, Emanuele Olivetti, Paolo Avesani, Active Sampling for Detecting Irrelevant Features 2. Yilei Wang and Hui Pan, Tao Li, The Data Mining of the E-Government on the Basis on Fuzzy Logic, 3. Malik Shahzad Kaleem Awan, Mian Muhammad Awais, Data Mining Redefining the Boundaries IEEE Computer Society. 4. Braudy, James R. 1965. Japanese Administrative Behavior and the Sala Model,Philippine journal of Public Administation, Vol.8, No. 2, Page 314-332. 5. Teece, David J., Gary Pisano, and Amy Shuen. 1997. Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 18, Issue 7, Page 509-533 6. Shen, Chu-Ta . 1987. A Study on Riggs Ecological Public Administration Model, Journal of Su Chou University, Page 9-10. 7. Riggs, Fred W. 1973. Prismatic Society Revisited. Morriston, New Jersey: General Learning Press. 8. Harrison, David A., M.A. Shaffer and Dora M. Luk. 2005. Input-Based and Time-Based Models of International Adjustment: Meta-Analytic Evidence and Theoretical Extension, The Academy of the Management Journal, Vol. 48, No. 2, Page 257-281. 9. Pawson, R., and Tilley N. 1997. Realistic Evaluation, London: Sage Publication. 205

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10. G.S. Malik and Gopal Meena , Formation of Citizens Charter, Promise of E-Governance Operational Challenges, Page 5-9 11. G.S. Malik and Gopal Meena , E-government to Identify Corruption Abuses, Promise of EGovernance Operational Challenges, Page 100-105 12. Gopal Meena, Re-engineering Government: A Critical Analysis, E-Government: Macro Issues, Page 232-239 About the Author Gopal Meena, IAS, is presently working as Collector and District Magistrate Siwan, Bihar. He has done his Masters Degree in Computer Technology from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in 2001. Has worked as Scientist in DRDO and has designed and implemented e-governance projects successfully there. Also presented papers in ICEG 2003 and ICEG 2005. Ph +91-6154-242099 Mobile +919934688908 Email gopalmeena.ias@gmail.com and dm-siwan-bih@nic.in.

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Open Government Data : More than Eighty Formats

Neeta Verma 1 * and M P Gupta 2 ABSTRACT Governments , across the world are increasingly publishing their data in open formats ie datasets released are free to use, reuse and redistribute by anyone. Citizens, Civil society and domain experts are using this data through direct download or develop visualizations for better understanding of data. Developers & business are using these datasets to create apps for customized, targeted group of users. As of today there are over 100 data portals belonging to government & non government agencies across the world. Review of 30 country level data portals was conducted to find out the variety of formats in which different datasets are released. Government have released their open data in 80 different formats. Dataset format is one of the many dimensions of open data initiative and thus needs an immediate attention as it may lead to lot of issues of interoperability & integration as we move forward and have billions of datasets worldwide. Keywords: Open Data, Interoperability, Data Formats, Standards 1. Background Proliferation of Internet, World Wide Web has led to information revolution. There are increasing efforts at all levels , government, business, civil society as well as individuals, to publish more & more information & data in digital form. Digital Repositories are being built for wide variety of subjects. Social Media & other tools of Web 2.0 has also given exponential rise to information & data in digital form (Kiu, Yuen, Tsui 2012). Use of technology by organisations & individuals has further pushed the spread of digital information. While lot of information & data is being digitized, there is whole lot of data, generated originally in electronic form and then there is another lot of data being generated by the use of technology for project management, process automation, analytics etc (Deirdre 2011). Governments all over the world have also embraced technology in big way. It helps them not only increase transparency, accountability but also increase their efficiency. ICT has enabled government in delivering more effective & efficient services to its citizens. It has helped governments in engaging with the citizens and building a better relationship. Public Consultations, Discussion forums, opinion polls, social media presence, interaction and many more instruments are being used by government to engage with their citizens, civil society groups as well as professional bodies. Extensive use of ICT has also given rise to a whole lot of government data in digital form (Kiu, Yuen, Tsui 2012). 2. Open Government Data(OGD) Open data is non-personally identifiable data collected, compiled or produced in the process of organizations routine functioning, which has been released under an unrestricted license. Open data is freely available for everyone to use, reuse & distribute without restrictions from copyright, patents or other means of control. Open Data is catching a lot of attention with organizations all over the world. Though the concept of Open data is not new but it is gaining prominence with the proliferation of the Internet (Ralf 2012), World Wide Web and most importantly availability of huge amount of data in digital form (Christian et al 2011).
1

National Informatics Centre, Ministry of Communications & IT, Govt. of India, India *Corresponding Author: (Email: neeta@nic.in) 2 Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India

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Governments also collect, compile & generate a vast amount of data. Right from geographical data, statistical data, scientific data, financial data to social sector data, development & demographic data, be it census, wide variety of socio economic surveys, planning, budgeting , natural resources & their utilization, weather data, environment data, Air quality, water quality, geographical & spatial data. Land Records, Vehicle registration, government, distribution of subsidies under various welfare schemes also generate a whole lot of interesting data. (Dekkers 2006) have classified government data as Business, Geographic, Legal, Meteorological, Social and Transport. While (Davies, 2010) highlights that besides administrative data, governments also generate large amounts of political data and information such as records of parliamentary discussions, voting Records of elected representatives. It is felt that this data has a lot of untapped potential. Data available in open format can be used to develop new products and services around government functioning to serve the citizens better. Interest in using government data available in open format has been increasing in recent years (Hoxha, Brahaj 2011). Civil society groups, businesses, individual citizens, academia and of course media are showing keen interest towards access to government data in open formats. Many believe that public data should be open by default, as it is pertaining to the public domain and has been collected using public funds, taxes etc. As a result, over the last few years, Governments across the world are increasingly making their data available online in open formats and under licenses that permit the free reuse of data. Information is a very valuable resource in this era of information led society. Governments generally tend to control dissemination of information & data to citizens. The Open Government Data movement brings a transformation of governments role from custodian of government data to its publisher. It not only releases government data in open format, free from all controls but it also facilitates its usage by community , civil society, citizens. This shall bring a paradigm shift in the government citizen relationship (Davies 2010, Gigler, Custer, Rahmetulla 2011). It shall significantly change the way government information is disseminated, government services are delivered to citizens and the way citizens or community shall engage with government. 3. Motivations for Open Government Data Though Open data movement has its roots in developed countries, but in last eighteen months or so, number of developing nations have also adopted it (Gigler Custer, Rahmetulla 2011) with equal enthusiasm. Governments have a variety of motivations to adopt Open data . While for some transparency & accountability is the prime motivator of open government data, for others citizen engagement is the key factor. Good Governance, Better relationship & trust with citizens are another important motivators. Development of new services, delivery of government services in targeted, customized manner, innovation in service delivery are other important factors. (Gigler, Custer, Rahmetulla 2011) has identified four notable OGD drivers namely transparency and accountability, economic growth and innovation, inclusive participation and government efficiency. UK government has outlined transparency and accountability, citizen-led public sector reform, economic and social innovation and gaining prominence in semantic-web, as the drivers of their Open Government Data Initiative (Shadbolt et al 2011). Open government data is considered to have a lot of Social & Democratic Value. It is seen as a means to promote transparency and accountability in the functioning of government. Understanding government data through visualization & interpretation promotes citizen engagement and community collaboration with the government (Robinson 2009). There is also significant economic potential in the open government data, business can use to create value added services. European Union has estimated that overall economic gains from opening up data could amount to Euro $40 billion a year in European Union. Thus by opening up data, government will facilitate the creation of innovative service models that shall deliver social & economic value (Maali 2010). 208

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4. Open Government Data : Current Scenario Initial exploration of open data and its potential was carried out in October 2008, by the District of Columbia (DC), United States . Besides releasing datasets in open they had also organized a civic hacker competition- Apps for Democracy, to facilitate development of applications featuring newly released government datasets . (Gigler, Custer, Rahmetulla 2011). Encouraged by the success of this initiative In January 2009, US President Barrack Obama released a Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government based on three principles: transparency, participation and collaboration (Hoffman 2011). This paved the way for the launch of data.gov, the data portal in 2009 making increasing numbers of datasets from US government agencies publicly available (Patrice 2010). Later Prime Minister Gordon Brown catalyzed the OGD movement in the UK and launched data.gov.uk in April 2010, making 3,000 raw datasets publicly available (Ding,2010). Shadbolt, (2011) highlights the lessons learned in Open Government & Linked Data web from their association with open government programme of UK government. Open Government Data (OGD) is today considered as an important initiative by governments across the world. A number of national and international data portals have been deployed to release datasets online. Today over 30 countries have already launched their data portals including countries from developed & developing world, latest additions being Kenya, Moldova and Chile (Rahemtulla 2012, Gigler 2011). Large number of state & city level administration or municipal corporations have also published their datasets in open format. (12010). In India, National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) has been recently notified by the Government through a Gazette notification. According to this policy, all government departments shall soon release their datasets in open formats on Data Portal India at http://data.gov.in. Schulz (2012) highlights the application of Open data in better decision making in Disaster management. McGuinness et al (2012) explores semantic web technologies and linked data as enabling technologies for next generation health information portals while (Assogba, 2011) explores their usage in visualization of Legislation and citizen engagement. It is estimated that as of now we have over 1 million datasets available from governments in open domain (IOGDS 2012). These datasets span over a wide range of data significant to civic issues, e.g. locations of toxic waste dumps, regional health-care costs and local government spending to crime statistics, transport data, school statistics etc. World bank data portal (http://data.worldbank.org) provides download access to over 8000 development indicators from World Bank datasets. It also provides access to data relating to its Finances, Project & Operations in each country. 5. Dimensions of Open Government Data Any Open Data initiative has six dimensions Policy, Platform, Datasets, Technology, Apps , Community & management. Policy or directive, issued by government highlights its objective & strategy around open data. License under which datasets shall be released is another aspect. Presence of a champion or leader to promote the case of open data increases the probability of success of the initiative manifold. Huijboom & Hwang (2011) examines the open data strategies in five countries and provides evidence of its key features, barriers and drivers for progress and effects. It defines key challenges for effective national and European open data policy. Hoffman & Hwang (2011) studies the ethics of public data dissemination and makes a comparative study of South Korea, Poland & USA Platform refers to Portal which shall provide single point access to datasets published by all entities of the government. With workflow based contribution, simple search/access to datasets, portal shall also provide a platform to share, explore & experience datasets. Datasets are at the core of any open data initiative, Datasets, their formats, quality, value and relevance are important attributes. Metadata or description of the datasets is another important dimension of data 209

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description which helps consumers as well as developers in using the datasets. Better is the description, better is discovery & use of dataset through apps or mashups. Data Standards, Codes, Vocabularies & Schemas are also important aspects of datasets (Salas et al 2011). Apps are also an important dimension of open government data initiative. Apps could be developed by government for easy access to voluminous government data or they could be developed by civil society or developer community to deliver services around government data. Business could also develop apps to provide value added, customized services to citizens Technology determines the ease of discovery, access & use of datasets. Generally every country has specific data portal set up for the purpose. Datasets are published on portal through a predefined workflow. Portal facilitates discovery & Access to datasets. Datasets could be directly downloaded or consumed through APIs. Portals sometimes provide a platform for citizens & other users to develop apps consuming data streams in real time. Portal can also enable a platform for exploration, discussion as well as Sharing of datasets, It can help create an altogether new experience of dealing with data. (Lopes, Oliveira 2011) defines an Open Data Architecture, DIGO (Delivering Information of Government) for Government .

Figure 1 : Open Government Dimensions Community includes all those who are interested in datasets right from citizens, civil society, software developers, business, journalists as well as academic & research groups (Tinati et al 2011). Citizens need to know about datasets released, need to understand datasets, civil society need to explore data to find relevant info out of it (Davies 2010). Software developers need to discuss & understand the datasets to develop various apps & visualizations around datasets for better understanding of other interest groups (Powell, Davies & Taylor 2012). They can also help in building innovative services over datasets released by government. Journalists are interested in datasets to develop stories around data (Bohm 2010). Businesses explore datasets to understand its economic value or what kind of value added service they could offer around datasets released. Management is also an important dimension to provide sustainability to entire initiative. Management to sustain continued release of datasets, progressive improvement in quality of datasets, establish of best practices around dataset life cycle, mobilizing community to promote use of datasets is very crucial towards the success of open government initiative over long time

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6. Dataset Formats Datasets are at the core of any Open Government Data effort. Publishing of datasets is one aspect while equally important aspect is use of datasets. Extent of use of datasets released is one of the important factors to determine the success of open data initiative . If citizens, civil society, community or business have to use these datasets it important that datasets are easy to access, comprehend & one can develop apps that can easily consume datasets (Bohm 2010). One of the important characteristic of open data is that it should be machine readable (Powell, Davies & Taylor 2012). People should be able to develop apps that can directly consume datasets without any manual effort on data format conversion (O'Hara 2012). This becomes all the more critical when data is changing at high frequency monthly, weekly, daily or hourly. It is not feasible for developers to download dataset, convert into desired format and then post it for use by their apps. This can become a big deterrent in developing an app around such a dataset. Large number of apps are developed using continuous stream of data such as traffic situation in a locality, Weather forecast, commodity prices etc. People should be able to easily access & use data, if datasets are in formats that are open, do not require any proprietary software or specific tool to access it. It should also not require any special effort to extract data from datasets (Davies 2010). Datasets are generally published through web based data portals. Data portals generally have catalogs of datasets along with some metadata to describe the organization releasing the dataset as well as content of dataset in addition to geography, jurisdiction & time period of data. An analysis of thirty country level data portals of government was carried out from dataset format perspective. List of countries and their Portals are highlighted in Table1. Table 1: List of Countries & their Data Portals considered under the scope of the study http://data.gov.au Kenya opendata.go.ke http://data.wien.gv.at http://www.bahrain.bh/wps/portal/ Bahrain Belgium Brazil Canada Chile Czech Republic France Finland Greece data/ http://data.gov.be/ http://dados.gov.br http://data.gc.ca http://datos.gob.cl http://opendata.cz/en data.gouv.fr http://data.suomi.fi http://geodata.gov.gr/geodata http://www.gov.hk/en/ Hong Kong Ireland Italy Peru theme/psi/welcome/ http://www.statcentral.ie/ http://www.dati.gov.it/ http://www.datosperu.org 211 Morocco Netherlands New Zealand Norway Portugal Republic of Korea Saudi Arabia Singapore Spain United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States http://data.overheid.nl http://data.govt.nz http://data.norge.no http://dados.gov.pt http://www.data.go.kr http://www.saudi.gov.sa http://data.gov.sg http://datos.gob.es http://www.government. ae/web/guest/uae-data http://data.gov.uk http://data.gov Moldova http://data.gov.md http://data.gov.ma

Australia Austria

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On detailed, in depth inspection of these portals it was found that there are over eighty data formats in which datasets are released on these thirty portals. List of these data formats grouped based on their similarities are listed in Table 2. It can be seen that while some formats are quite open, some need proprietary tools to access data from these datasets. Many of them are in fact document formats which shall have text & data intermixed thus making extraction of data extremely difficult task. There are many dataset formats which are not at all data formats . They are in fact image formats from where data can not be extracted. It can either be only referred or has to be manually typed for reuse Some of the portals have allowed datasets to published in any digital format which makes situation worse.

Table 2: Data Formats adopted by Data Portals Worldwide S.N o 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 Formats XLS, XLSX CSV XML PDF HTML, HTML- table, RDF, RDFa, RDF/XML JSON, JS RSS, Geo RSS KML XHTML TXT DOC, WS ODS GML KMZ REST, SOAP, WSDL GPX PPT ODT RAW PNG, TIFF RTF TSV SHP WMS DBF, Online Database, PGDB ECW EXE Geo TIFF, Other Geo JPG Zip , CSV+Zip, zip+sas, XLS zip+, TXT+ Zip API , Mathlab Spreadsheets, Google Spreadsheets Description Excel spreadsheets Comma-Separated Values Extensible Markup Language Portable Document Format Hyper Text Markup Language Resource Description Framework Java Script Object Notation , Java Script Real Simple Syndication, Geo RSS feeds Keyhole Markup Language Extensible Hyper Text Markup Language Raw Text Format Document Format Open Document Spreadsheet Geospatial Markup Language KML files compressed into ZIP Web Services Protocol & Description Langauge GPS eXchange Format Powerpoint Presentation Open Document Text Image File Format Portable Network Graphic, Tagged Image Format File Rich Text Format Tab Separated Values Shape Files (ESRI) Web Map Service Databases Enhanced Compression Wavelet Executable Geographic Tagged Image File Format Image Format Compressed Formats Application Programming Interface Computer algebra system (.MAT) Spreadsheets 212

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S.N o 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

Formats MDB Metastock XSD N3 OAI-PMH ODF ATOM openDataXML, XML-ATOMRSS MBD, SPARQL, SQL OXL Datastream TMX URL, PORTAL, WEB Indicator Portal, Webpage, CIDR Mapinfo, Autre, Turtle, Micro Station Design, Catalogue, ASCII

Description Microsoft Database Charting and technical analysis of Stock Prices XML Schema Notation 3 (RDF Triplets) Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting Open Document Format Web Syndication XML Variants Multimedia Builder Query Languages Omega Product Suite File (Data Mining) Steaming Format Translation Memory eXchange Web Document Classless Inter-Domain Routing

50

Miscellaneous Formats

Many countries have provisioned for datasets to be published in large number of formats. In fact 4 countries have allowed more that 15-20 different formats in which datasets can be published. While 4 countries have allowed 10-15 formats for datasets. 9 countries among 30 have provisioned 5-10 dataset formats. Figure 2 Illustrates the number of datasets permitted by different country level open data portals under the scope of study
14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 05 510 1015 1520 >20 Countries

Figure 2 : Distribution of No. of formats permissible by different Country Data Portals

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Closer look at these data formats reveal that while there are over eighty formats adopted by various country portals, all of them are not distinctly different. For some its variation, version of same format such as XLS, XLSX or RDF. RDFa. While for some it is a nomenclature variation, same format is referred by different name by different portals. For some others its a difference of scope such as spreadsheet, Google spreadsheet, or HTML, HTML-Table, Webpage, Web. After grouping similar/overlapping formats into groups, we have listed them in Table 2 in 50 different group of formats. Frequency of adoption by different countries of the top 20 formats is illustrated in Figure 3.
HTML table GPX GeoRSS KMZ GML ODS DOC TXT XLSX KML RSS JSON SHP RDF HTML PDF XML CSV XLS 0 5 10 15 20 25

Countries

Figure 3 : Most Popular Dataset Formats adopted by various country data portals under study 7. Discussion Eighty different formats shall present a lot of challenge for data visualizers as well as App developers. It is going to be really important issue as more & more apps are developed through integration of multiple datasets published by different agencies. Use of close format datasets or formats from which extraction of data is very difficult is going to become a huge deterrent for use of datasets. Recently Civil Societies, Researchers & International Agencies are integrating datasets of different countries to study the variance of socio economic development indicators. It is also going to make it difficult for citizens to use these datasets, because to access different formats different tools would be needed. While it is understood that one could develop tools or solutions to convert from one format to another for quite a few formats, but it shall involve an extra effort and may impact use of datasets. As highlighted above that some of these dataset formats are different versions of same format , while for some its a nomenclature, and or some others its an overlapping scope , it is felt its largely an issue of certain discipline on consensus. If some effort could be put in to either define couple of open data formats 214

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or some consensus could be built at an international level considering a set of five to seven formats as open data formats which could represent administrative as well as geospatial data.. 8. Conclusion On studying the open government data strategies of different countries, it was noticed that their focus is to release as many datasets in open as possible. They feel they should initially focus on the number of datasets released while other parameters can be resolved subsequently that is why they have allowed multiple formats, in fact some have also given option for any other format. While this shall increase the number of datasets released but may create lot of issues relating to integration, interoperability of datasets. And this issue may manifest into a huge concern as we move from million to billion of datasets. As it has been expressed by many authors (Davies 2010; Davies 2012 ; Rahmetulla et al 2012) that open government data initiatives shall make good impact if datasets released are of high quality , selfexplanatory & above all easily Accessible & Usable. An effort in the direction of some sort of standardization or consensus shall go a long away in the history of Open Government Data. References 1. Assogba, Yannick, et al. "Many bills: engaging citizens through visualizations of congressional legislation." Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems. ACM, 2011. 2. Bhm, Christoph, Felix Naumann, Markus Freitag, Stefan George, Norman Hfler. "Linking open government data: what journalists wish they had known." Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Semantic Systems. ACM, 2010. 3. Christian Bizer, Boncz Peter, Brodie Michael L. & Erling Orri Bizer, "The meaningful use of big data: four perspectives--four challenges." ACM SIGMOD Record 40.4 (2012): 56-60. 4. Christian Geiger and J. V. Lucke, "Open Government Data. Free accessible data of the public sector," in Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government (CeDEM11), 2011, pp. 183-194. 5. Davies Tim G. & Bawa Zainab Ashraf, Journal of Community Informatics, Vol 8, No 2 (2012), The Promises and Perils of Open Government data 6. Desrochers, Pierre. "To Know and Be Known: Recordkeeping and Linking Government Data in Canada." IEEE Intelligent Systems (2012). 7. Ding, Li, et al. "TWC LOGD: A portal for linked open government data ecosystems." Web Semantics: Science, Services and Agents on the World Wide Web 9.3 (2011): 325-333. 8. Ding Li , Deborah L. McGuinness , James R. Michaelis , Jim Hendler, Making Sense of Open Government Data , Proceedings of Web Science Conference. 2010, 9. Hoffman Mark C. & Hwang SungsooOctober 2011, The Ethics of Public Data Dissemination: A Comparative Study of South Korea, Poland and USA 10. Howard, Alex Data for the Public Good. Data for the Public Good, ISBN: 9781449329754 11. Huijboom Noor, Tijs Van den Broek , Open data: an international comparison of strategies, European Journal, 2011 12. Hoxha Julia , Brahaj Armand, Open Government Data on the Web: A Semantic Approach, IEEE proceedings of 2011 International Conference on Emerging Intelligent Data and Web Technologies 13. Ralf Klischewski, Identifying Informational Needs for Open Government: The Case of Egypt, IEEE Computer Society 2012, DOI 10.1109/HICSS.2012.312 14. Lopes Machado Alexandre & Oliveira Jose Maria Parente de, IEEE 2011, DIGO: An Open Data Architecture for e-Government 15. Maali, F., Cyganiak, R., Peristeras, V.: Enabling Interoperability of Government Data Catalogues, in Electronic Government 10th International Conference, EGOV 2010 (2010). 16. McCusker James P., Lebo Timothy, Chang Cynthia & Silva Paulo Pinheiro da.Parallel Identities for Managing Open Government Data. 215

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17. McGuinness Deborah L, Lebo Tim, Shaikh Abdul R & Moser Richard P. (2012)Towards Semantically-Enabled Next generation Community Health Information Portals: the PopSciGrid Pilot 18. Powell Mike, Davies Tim & Taylor Keisha Candica,..(2012) ICT for or Against Development? An Introduction to the Ongoing Case of Web 3.0 19. ReggiLuigi..Benchmarking Open Data Availability across Europe: The Case of EU Structural Funds 20. Salas Percy, Viterbo Jose, Breitman Karin & Casanova Marco Antonio (2011) StdTrip: Promoting the Reuse of Standard Vocabularies in Open Government Data, In Wood, David (Ed.), Linking Government Data, Springer, pp 113-133 21. Shadbolt Nigel, Hara Kieron O, Berners-Lee Tim & Gibbins Nick ..IEEE Intelligent Systems 2011 (10.1109/MIS.2012.23) , Open Government Data and the Linked Data Web: Lessons from data.gov.uk 22. Schulz Axel, Doweling Sebastian & Probst Florian (2012) Integrating Process Modeling and Linked Open Data to Improve Decision Making in Disaster Management, ACM Proceedings 23. Tinati Ramine, Halford Susan, Carr Leslie, & Pope Catherine..2011..Conceptualising a Web of Linked Actors, ACM WebSci '11, Koblenz, Germany, June 2011. 24. Robinson D, H Yu, W Zeller, E Felten, Government data and the invisible hand, Yale Journal of Law & Technology, Vol. 11, p. 160, 2009 25. Ten Principles for Opening Up Government Information August 11, 2010, Sunlight Foundation ( http://sunlightfoundation.com ) 26. Dekkers, M. et al., 2006. MEPSIR - Measuring European Public Sector Information Resources, ( http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/actions_eu/policy_actions/mepsir/index_en.htm 27. Tim Davies, Open Data, Democracy and Public Sector Reform,(MSc Dissertation, University of Oxford, 2010), http://www.opendataimpacts.net/report/ 28. Kiu, Ching-Chieh, Lai-Yung Yuen, and Eric Tsui. "Semantic interoperability for enhancing sharing and learning through e-government knowledge-intensive portal services." Journal of EGovernance 33.2 (2010): 108-116. 29. Gigler, S; Custer, S. and Rahmetulla, H. (2011) Realizing the Vision of Open Government DataOpportunities, Challenges and Pitfalls, Open Development Technology Alliance, The World Bank. 30. Rahemtulla Hanif , Samantha Custer, Irina Tisacova, Kaushal Jhalla, Soren Gigler, and Charles Brigham (2012) The Journey of Open Government and Open Data Moldova, Open Development Technology Alliance, The World Bank. 31. IOGDS Data Analytics 2012 (The TWC International Open Government Dataset Search ) http://logd.tw.rpi.edu/iogds_data_analytics 32. O'Hara Kieron (2012) Data quality, government data and the open data infosphere. AISB/IACAP World Congress 2012: Information Quality Symposium, Birmingham, GB, 03 Jul 2012. 6pp

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Tracking the Sociotechnical Barriers to Digital Identity Adoption in Arab Countries A Case Study of Qatar
Divakaran Liginlal 1*, Daniel Phelps1, and Lansine Kaba1 ABSTRACT A digital identity encapsulates a set of claims made about a person or thing represented or existing in a digital realm. Digital identities are crucial to many emerging applications in Qatar, such as e-government and e-payments, for delivery of effective and safe services to the citizens. Because of the difficulty of controlling the distribution and use of digital identities beyond set boundaries, their adoption, deployment, and management entail critical technological, political, social, and policy issues. The research proposed here aims to: (1) better understand these sociotechnical barriers to the adoption of digital identity and related technologies for e-government in Qatar and other Arab countries through interviews with scholars and other stakeholders in government and industry, and (2) develop a framework for further detailed research. The lessons learned will provide guidelines and recommendations for addressing the barriers and act as a catalyst for strengthening a related policy formulation regime. Keywords: sociotechnical barriers, digital identity, e-government, privacy, technology adoption

1. Background A digital identity contains data that uniquely describe a person or a thing, referred to as a subject or entity, and refers to information about the subjects relationships to other entities (Windley, 2006). The term Identity and Access Management (IAM) encompasses the technologies, processes, policies, and supporting infrastructures necessary for the deployment, control, and maintenance of digital identities. The objective of IAM is to control access to informational resources and e-services based on the identities that manage or use the resources. Identity management systems must accommodate the needs of three key groups of stakeholders. First, individuals need to control access to their personal information. Second, businesses need to identify and authenticate users, employees, and partners, track interaction history, and share information seamlessly with partners. Finally, governments need to act on behalf of individuals to regulate the use of information among businesses and also supply many critical types of e-services to their citizens. Digital identities exist in numerous forms and formats, such as combinations of userids and passwords, PIN numbers, etc. Digital identities are crucial in many applications, such as e-government, e-health, electronic payments, and e-banking. Given the uncontrollable distribution of these identities beyond set boundaries, their adoption, deployment, and management entail critical social, political, business, technology, and policy issues that affect users and all stakeholders. The information related to these identities is distributed by nature across enterprises, geographical boundaries, business entities, databases, and applications. Their management is therefore complex and very costly. Further, the social acceptance of digital identities, particularly citizen identification systems that are controversial because of their privacy, security, and usability aspects, has generated interest among researchers in recent times (Backhouse and Halperin, 2007).
1

College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Qatar *Corresponding Author: (Email: liginlal@cmu.edu)

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The term sociotechnical encompasses the technological, social, political, regulatory, and cultural aspects of deploying a technology and managing the related infrastructure (Painuly, 2001; Peddle, 2007; Petersen & Andersen, 2009). The following categories of barriers taken from Elliot, Birch, Ford, & Whitcombe (2008) also serve as a good starting point for discussion: (1) social barriers, such as the loss of anonymity, culture of distrust, and disregard for privacy; (2) economic barriers, such as the initial implementation costs or the transaction costs; (3) Technical barriers, such as proprietary standards and issues related to interoperability; (4) organizational barriers, such as the lack of internal capacity of some corporations, the aversion to change, or the feeling of being spied upon; and (5) legal barriers because of legal complexities and corporate ID policies. In our research, we consider the sociotechnical system discussed in (Geels, 2005; Geels & Schot, 2007) as a theoretical framework for describing and explaining digital identities. According to Ropohl (1993), the concept of a sociotechnical system was established to stress the reciprocal interrelationship between humans and machines and to foster the program of shaping both the technical and the social conditions of work, in such a way that efficiency and humanity would not contradict each other any longer. From a sociotechnical systems perspective, systems that are dependent on digital identities extend beyond their engineering roots and comprehend the technization of society and the socialization of technology (Ropohl, 1982). Hughes (1987) argued that large technological systems are simultaneously social and technical or sociotechnical in at least two ways. First, systems require social institutions and technical artifacts to function. A digital identity system, for example, reflects social institutions such as regulatory bodies and financial firms. At the same time, it encompasses technical artifacts such as a certificate infrastructure, active directories, and security tokens that embed such certificates and are integrated into enterprise applications. Second, the management of infrastructure and the related expertise brings in an epistemic element that may help study why digital identity systems vary between geographic regions. Thus, the differences between the sociotechnical environments in Qatar and other Arab countries and those of the European Union (EU) and the USA are of particular interest to us. In effect, IAM systems may be characterized as embodying the physical, intellectual, and symbolic resources of the society that constructs them. Thus, local cultural issues require consideration. Several questions arise in attempting to identify the most important and/or most challenging sociotechnical barriers to the adoption and deployment of digital identity technologies. Is the above classification scheme sufficient for studying the underlying issues? What differentiates the case of Qatar and the Gulf region from other parts of the world? What are the regulatory implications and standardization efforts required to overcome the barriers that have been identified? To answer these questions, the research has the following broad aims: (1) conduct a comprehensive analysis of the related research literature and technical reports; (2) develop a framework for studying the above questions by applying sociotechnical systems theory combined with methods of morphological analysis; and (3) interview/survey key stakeholders in the government and business sectors in Qatar and the Gulf region as a way to collect and report preliminary data related to barriers to the adoption of digital identity systems and to methods of overcoming or mitigating such barriers. This paper reports initial results from our literature study and interviews. 2. Results of our literature review A survey of contemporary literature on information security reveals the existence of only a few studies undertaken to identify the sociotechnical barriers to digital identities. A recent EU study (Elliot et al., 2008) and Whitley and Hosein (2009) seem to be the only significant works at a national/multinational level. A Springer journal titled Identity in the Information Age began publication only in December 2009 (Springer, 2009). Lack of many references cited in the EU report and in Halperin and Backhouse (2009) serve as sufficient proof of the significance of this new research stream. Two important results 218

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emerged from our literature review. The first pertains to developing a framework for studying sociotechnical barriers to digital identities and the second to the important role of religion, privacy, and regulations in the context of Qatar and other Arab countries. These two results are discussed below. 2.1 Framework to study sociotechnical barriers to digital identities Organizations have a need to harness the owner of an identity in a long-term relationship. Facilitating the distribution of this identity across enterprises, geographical boundaries, business entities, databases, and applications, involves the following kinds of impediments. - Social barriers such as distrust of technology or fear of the potential loss of privacy. - Technical barriers, such as proprietary standards and issues, related to interoperability and legacy systems. Further, from a software engineering perspective, the need to manage multiple software implementations across multiple operating systems and platforms generates more security vulnerabilities. From a systems engineering perspective, the need to handle inconsistencies arising from different developers leads to user confusion as well as to security problems. When each application is responsible for its own security components, it is nearly impossible to manage roles and access across various applications in an enterprise. - The scalability of IAM solutions, especially in a federated system, requires the determination of service level agreements and the capability to expand IT resources without a corresponding increase in IT staff. Although scalability is a technical matter, an understanding of it is required if one is to understand the business requirements regarding the number of users to be supported and the estimated transaction rates. The planned growth of IAM systems needs to be addressed as part of the initial system design so that this system can be scaled to meet the organizations business needs. - Economic barriers such as the initial costs of adoption and the increased cost of each transaction. - Organizational barriers such as the inadequate management of change because of a lack of internal capacity or inertia. Similarly, account management challenges include those related to human resources-driven provisioning, Web-driven provisioning, and complex workflow provisioning. For instance, federation does not completely eliminate the need to administer the digital identities of the federated users on both sides of the federation. Further, crossorganizational business processes that support user provisioning and deprovisioning need to be in place. - Legal barriers include related legal complexities, corporate ID policies, and the institution of national laws affecting identity. Further, integrating the security infrastructures of two organizations for the purposes of federation calls for standardization, mutual understanding, and the ability to acquire or build the required systems. - Policy-related barriers include uncertainties in governmental policies, lack of regulatory measures, inadequately equipped regulatory agencies, and difficulties with integrating digital identities with the national infrastructure. The EU study (Elliot et al., 2008) was unable to recommend a viable categorization of the most important and/or challenging sociotechnical barriers; in fact it was determined that the technical, social, economic, and legal issues facing digital identity are so intertwined that it would be ill-advised to analyze these aspects separately. It was clear that a better taxonomy or categorization that would allow for a more thorough cross-disciplinary analysis is needed. The report offers one such alternative classification that policymakers may use. Although the EU report does not specifically investigate the internal market dimension of the various barriers to the deployment of digital identity systems, the report highlights the role of EU policymaking at various stages in overcoming barriers. It also emphasizes the genuine need to better understand the specifically European dimension of a particular barrier to digital identity.

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2.2 The critical issues of religion, privacy, and regulations The EU study also did not address the issue of the privacy concerns of users in the context of authentication. The two primary objectives of deploying authentication technologies are to control access to resources and account for resource usage. However, most authentication systems require disclosure of personal data that are often traceable to their owners. The privacy issues related to authentication have received less attention than they have in other areas such as privacy in statistical databases and privacypreserving data mining applications. The key difference in the case of authentication systems is that the interest in acquiring personal data for authentication doesnt lie in knowledge of the actual values of the attributes but rather in the claim of its existence and the concurrent need to link it to a specific individual. A survey of the literature confirms very little progress in addressing this topic either analytically or empirically. Bhargav-Spantzel, Squicciarini, & Bertino (2006), DeCew (1997), Halperin & Backhouse (2009), Millett & Holden (2003), U.S. National Research Council (2003), Palmer, Bailey, Faraj (2000), Liginlal & Khansa (2010), and Liginlal, Sim, Khansa, Fearn (2011) are among the few authoritative studies on this topic. The primary objective during authentication is not to sacrifice privacy for higher accuracy but rather to disclose minimal private information in exchange for a maximal level of assurance of an authentication claim. However, this topic is of paramount importance given the cultural and religious context of Qatar and the Gulf region. Islamic nations appear to have only recent adopted privacy regulations and systems to protect data. It is noteworthy that Islam has articulated the respect and promotion of individual rights because each person is ultimately responsible for his or her actions in order to deserve salvation. Malaysia was the first Islamic country to consider data protection laws (Azmi, 2002). Interestingly, Azmi (2002) noted that these first attempts at the protection of personal data were being made without the pillar of privacy, without recourse to the fundamental human right of private and family life. In 2007, Dubai became the first Arab nation to implement a substantial data protection law; at the same time it created an independent Office of Commissioner of Data Protection. Similarly, Tunisia was the first North African country to introduce a data protection law. An interesting discussion about data protection and values of privacy and religious rule systems as variously defined within predominantly Islamic societies can be drawn from Cannataci and Caruana (2007). As pointed out in that article, the extent to which legal principles established at the national and international levels are observed or ignored within a community because of competing rule systems, may be a matter of national as well as local concern. In any given community, one may often find at least three competing rule systems (national law, faith law, and cultural customs or norms), and occasionally conflicts arise between one or more of these systems. The structure of the Islamic religious system, like most other religions, resembles a three-tier hierarchy consisting of the core belief in the presence of a higher power, a layer of rule systems based on the Quran to codify the rules, and a layer of communal practices that help build a sense of community among those practicing the religion. As a particular religion evolves, its community layer is most susceptible to change. Thus, the unique position of Qatar, which is poised between deep-rooted conservatism and the winds of change defined by its vision for 2030, needs further study. As pointed out in Cannataci and Caruana (2007), it is also important to consider the impact of rule systems imported from outside a culture to competing and/or complementary rule systems that exist within another society. This pertains to transborder data flow, a situation in which the flow of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) between countries with dissimilar data protection laws must be taken into account. Historian Kaba (1974) has argued that Islam, although a monotheistic system of beliefs that is based on a solid, unchangeable doctrinal foundation, is very much a living religion. This view implies that with changing conditions, faiths and religion may evolve correspondingly. Unsurprisingly, since the Napoleonic foray into Egypt, the scholars of the famous Al-Azhar University in Cairo have welcomed modern science and technology (Kaba, 2010), with the proviso that such imported technology must not desacralize the Islamic tenets. If digital identities are not to be another failed imported Western solution (al-hudud al-mustawarada), they may well be used as a useful modern tool. Achieving this purpose will 220

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help mitigate the likely opposition of very traditional Muslim scholars who tend to see the West and its achievements as the national enemy of the Muslim world (Kaba, 2004; 2010). The importance of Islam to Qatar and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) will inform our generation of framework constructs related to privacy and data protection. Cannataci and Caruana (2007) provide a starting point for defining the role of religion in the context of our research. The framework constructs must incorporate the role of faith and culture, a comparison between Islamic and non-Islamic communities, a comparison between different countries in the Gulf regions, and an understanding of whether the differences are based in culture or in faith. Specific questions that arise within such a framework include those related to the fundamental notions of privacy, the awareness of privacy rights and data protection methods, and practices related to the observance of sensitive data protection methods, especially in a medical context. The Gulf region is part of the large Sunni Islamic world. The Gulf countries are even known for their adherence to the very orthodox Hanbali tradition that emerged in Arabia. The Gulf area has also become the center of a powerful, modern economic hub. This transformation suggests some accommodation with the imperative of technological and scientific development. Therefore, to achieve successful integration, any new important technological scientific artifact must respect these two dimensions of the Gulf regions culture. The literature review helped us formulate the design of interview questions (see Appendix I) and conduct a pilot study based on the corresponding research design. The research design and initial results are discussed in the next section. 3. Interview research - design and results The population for this phase of research consisted of experts on either the technology used in Digital Identity Management (IdM) or on the social implications of Digital IdM in Qatar. The criterion for selection for this research phase was expertise in the social or technical use of digital IdM products in Qatar and being older than 18. The selection was done through snowball or referral sampling (Welch, 1975), with the interview questionnaire being sent to identified subject matter experts (SMEs) in either the social or technical aspects of digital IdM in Qatar, and requesting that the expert also forward the questionnaire to other individuals he or she considered qualified as SMEs. Although the problems of undersampling isolated members and potential bias against deviates is recognized, the researchers were satisfied for the purposes of the pilot study with identifying SME majority views. The technique used to collect data consisted of a series of questions designed to elicit the respondents subjective beliefs regarding the importance and current state of digital IdM in Qatar, the sociotechnical barriers to IdM adoption in Qatar, and the existence and maturity of frameworks designed to address these issues. The information collected was free-form data that has been analyzed and synthesized to improve the understanding of the perceived importance of and sociotechnical barriers to adoption of digital IdM in Qatar. The procedures for collection included distribution of e-mail and collection of information through structured interviews. In the case of the former, the instruments were distributed to two known SMEs in the population representing technical and sociotechnical subject matter expertise with a request that the participant answer the questions and return the results and also forward the form to other known SMEs with the same instructions. The first respondent was a Qatari citizen with a degree in computer engineering who has worked for the national computer security incident response team (QCERT) for more than five years. The second respondent was a program manager in the Supreme Council for Information and Communication Technology and a member of the executive board for the local Internet Society. Each of these either responded or forwarded the instrument to several other SMEs.

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In the case of the latter, consent for an interview was obtained from two individuals with extensive experience in Qatar. The first was an IT professional who has worked in Qatar for several years in both government and quasigovernment settings in technical, managerial, and IT leadership positions. The second was an expert on Islam and the larger Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region. The instrument was distributed before the interview to allow these individuals time to collect any required information and to be familiar with the questions before the interview date. On the day of the scheduled interview, a trained interviewer met with the representatives to elicit their responses to the questions and to ensure that the intent of the questions was understood. The responses to the survey questions were either audio recorded, recorded on a survey form, with any additional information offered by the respondent annotated on the back side of the form for future analysis, or both. The participants were then asked about other SMEs with whom they were familiar for follow up. With e-mailed instruments, once the responses were returned, they were screened to eliminate those in which the subject failed to answer all the items. A follow-up phone call, e-mail, or personal contact was used to attempt to elicit the responses for skipped questions. Once the data was collected, the responses were analyzed and synthesized to develop an understanding of both the current state of digital IdM in Qatar as well as the sociotechnical barriers to its adoption. Responses were received from all the initial participants, plus some secondary SMEs, although not all were complete. The analysis of the responses indicate that there is a general belief in the importance of current and future use of digital identities, but also a recognition of the existence of significant barriers to fully realizing the benefits. One respondent who has worked extensively with the government on developing its e-services was able to explicitly specify three levels of assurance related to e-services in Qatar (Table 1), but no other SME was able to provide such specific requirements. Publicly Personally Identifiable Data Sensitive/ Confidential Available Data (PID) Submission/ Retrieval Data No Authentication Qatari ID/ID & Password Two-factor authentication Citizen/ Resident Necessary No Authentication Passport or Country ID/ID & N/A Visitor Necessary Password Locally Registered No Authentication Establishment ID/ID & Password Two-factor authentication Necessary Company No Authentication Commercial Registration Two-factor authentication Foreign Company Necessary Number/ ID & Password Table 1. Current levels of assurance related to e-services in Qatar Several key concerns were expressed with respect to sociotechnical barriers related to digital IdM. The most common sociocultural concern was the notion of trust in the use of technology. As one respondent indicated, as predicted by Rogers (1995), adoption likely will have a few technology savvy individuals who will immediately embrace its use, but several other members of the culture will fiercely resist. Cultural barriers to adoption included the preference for face-to-face interaction and individual service. In previous conversations, many have cited the nonstandardization of treatment locally in which the concept of wasta, or influence, can often dictate the terms of a service. This notion of preferential service will need to be explored more in follow-up studies. The Islamic history expert provided interesting insights into the cultural and religious facets underlying the adoption and deployment of digital identities in Qatar and the region. The expert emphasized that cultural barriers indeed exist in this society, which is still not very open and where people have concerns about the cultural acceptability of new technologies. However, there also is a sense of community that generates a feeling of need and respect for such technologies. Although faith is a matter between the 222

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individual and God, people want to express their faith openly in public. There is nothing explicitly mentioned in the Quran that implies that technologies such as digital identities are anathema to society, although Hayat (2007) asserts that the principle of privacy is fundamental to Islam. Any innovation that is good for the community is acceptable to Islam. In the historians words religion must coexist with technological progress. Fewer respondents were explicitly aware of the existence and maturity of frameworks designed to address issues related to IdM. Those most familiar with the issues believed that the technical infrastructure was just about ready, particularly with the coming full establishment of a National PKI project in Qatar. Moreover, there was some speculation that work under way to increase digital literacy, cyber safety, and skills in information and communication technology (ICT) in the general population addresses intellectual barriers and some cultural barriers as well. 4. Conclusion With digital identities becoming a mainstream technology and permeating business and society, several implications of the technology for the sociotechnical and cultural fabric require consideration. The argument that large technological systems are at the same time social and technical, or in other words sociotechnical, may be applied to the context of digital identities in the following ways: 1. Systems that use digital identities reflect social institutions such as regulatory bodies. At the same time, they encompass technical artifacts such as tags, readers, servers, and point-of-sale terminals. Several technical challenges to digital identities also still need to be addressed. These include improving reliability, setting standards, and testing and certification. Similarly, from a market perspective, the high initial investment costs and other market uncertainties related to first movers, standards, and adoption issues are all pertinent. However, these lie beyond the scope of this study. 2. The management of infrastructure and the expertise needed brings in an epistemic element that may help study the differences across geographic regions. In effect, in the words of Hughes (1987), systems that use digital identities may be characterized as embodying the physical, intellectual, and symbolic resources of the society that constructs them. 3. The success of implementing digital identities in one part of the Gulf region does not ensure successful adoption elsewhere. Local cultural issues are very influential factors. The diversity of legal frameworks across different Gulf countries can indeed serve as a barrier. The comprehensive survey of the literature allowed us to compare the different classification schemes adopted for the study of sociotechnical barriers to new technologies in general and to IAM in particular. Our research revealed three taxonomies of sociotechnical barriers applied to studies of a similar nature. The first classification, however, was determined to be deficient, and the EU study ultimately analyzed barriers according to the scale at which the issue is considered most important and/or challenging (individual, systems, or project level). This revealed that an alternate approach is to examine the barriers from a hierarchical perspective as identified in a study of renewable energy resources (Painuly, 2001). The work reported in this paper has several practical implications for Qatar and the region. Qatar is currently leading the Gulf region with its development efforts in ICT, e-health projects, and egovernment. ictQATAR, which is Qatar's center for information security and was established in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University, works with government agencies, businesses, and the citizens of Qatar to address cyber security risks, protect sensitive information, and ensure the safety of minors on the Internet. The results of this work will be of interest to ictQATAR, which is also the countrys independent and fair regulator. As the government body that nurtures innovative technologies to benefit those who live and work in Qatar, ictQATAR connects citizens to government and helps people of all ages and income levels become comfortable with technology so they can achieve their personal and professional goals. ictQATAR has only recently started working on privacy regulations, data protection laws, and standardization for the State of Qatar. 223

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Our preliminary results lead to the following conclusions. First, the adoption and diffusion of digital identities are crucial to e-government in Qatar, a program that Qatar has embarked upon through its central portal called Hukoomi. Second, it is also important to have a detailed study of how organizations in Qatar and the region protect their information resources and how they can improve managerial efforts in this area. The government of Qatar reportedly remains keen on promoting economic diversification and safeguarding consumer interests through regulatory measures. The most important result of our interview was the identification of possibly unique sociotechnical impediments related to the historical culture and faith traditions of Qatar and the GCC. The qualitative data also provided information on regulatory regimes being built in this or closely related areas, technical standardization efforts under way, and a time-frame for such efforts. We conclude by emphasizing that stimulating interest in digital identities as a sociotechnical system with emphasis on culture, religion, and privacy is of considerable significance to the success of e-government development efforts in Qatar and other Arab countries. Appendix I. Research Study - Interview Questionnaire

1. How important is identity management to the wide adoption of e-government in Qatar? 2. What is the state of adoption of digital identities for e-government in Qatar? 3. What sociotechnical barriers exist to the adoption and diffusion of digital identities in Qatar (and
the region)? Follow up questions a. Give us some examples of social, cultural, and religious barriers b. Give us some examples of technical barriers What kind of frameworks are in place to address these barriers and to ensure wider adoption? Do the existing frameworks sufficiently address these barriers? Follow up question Please tell us what are the related implications to e-government in Qatar?

4. 5. 6. 7.

References 1. Azmi, I.M. (2002) E-commerce and privacy issues: An analysis of the Personal Data Protection Bill, 17th BILETA Annual Conference, April 5-6, Amsterdam. 2. Backhouse, J., and Halperin, R. (2007). EU Citizen's Trust in Future ID Systems and Authorities. FIDIS Deliverable 4.4/4.5. Available at: http://www.fidis.net/resources/deliverables 3. Bhargav-Spantzel, A., Squicciarini, A., and Bertino, E. (2006). Privacy Preserving Multi-Factor Authentication with Biometrics. In Proceedings of the Second ACM Workshop on Digital Identity Management, ACM, New York, NY, 63-72. 4. Cannataci, J.A. & Caruana, M.M. (2007) Introduction, Information & Communications Technology Law, 16: 2, 91 - 98. 5. DeCew, J. (1997) In pursuit of privacy: Law, ethics, and the rise of technology. Cornell University Press, Sage House, Ithaca NY. 6. Elliot, J., Birch, D., Ford, M., and Whitcombe, A. (2008) Overcoming barriers in the EU digital identity sector. Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, European Commission. 7. Geels, F.W. (2005) Technological transitions and system innovations: A co-evolutionary and sociotechnical analysis, Edward Elgar Publishing, UK. 8. Geels, F.W., Schot, J. (2007) Typology of sociotechnical transition pathways, Research Policy 36, 399-417. 9. Hayat, M. A. (2007). Privacy and Islam: From the Quran to data protection in Pakistan. Information & Communications Technology Law, 16(2), 137-148. 224

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10. Halperin, R., and Backhouse, J. (2009). A Roadmap for Research on Identity in the Information Society. Identity in the Information Society 1 (1), 71-87. 11. Hughes, T.P. (1987). The Evolution of Large Technological Systems. In W. Bijker, P. Hughes and T. Pinch (eds.), The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the History and Sociology of Technology, Cambridge/Mass., MIT Press, 1-82. 12. Kaba, L. (1974) The Wahhabiyya: Islamic reform and politics in French West Africa, Northwestern University Press, Illinios. 13. Kaba, L. (2004) Cheikh Mouhammad Cherif et son temps, Presence Africaine, Paris. 14. Kaba, L. (2010) Allahou Akbar: Islam and Tolerance, Presence Africaine, Paris 15. Liginlal, D. Khansa, L. (2010). Privacy and e-authentication: The dangers of self-disclosure in social networks, Springer Lecture Notes on Business Information Processing, forthcoming. 16. Liginlal, D., Sim, I., Khansa, L., Fearn, P. (2011) Human error and HIPAA privacy rule compliance: An interpretive study using Norman's action theory, forthcoming in Computers and Security. 17. Millett, L.I., and Holden, H.S. (2003). Authentication and Its Privacy Effects. IEEE Internet Computing 6, 54-58. 18. Painuly, J.P. (2001) Barriers to renewable energy penetration: A framework for analysis. Renewable Energy 24, 73-89. 19. Palmer, J.W., Bailey, J.P., Faraj, S. (2000) The Role of Intermediaries in the Development of Trust on the WWW: The Use and Prominence of Trusted Third Parties and Privacy Statements. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 5 (3). 20. Peddle, K. (2007). Telehealth in Context: Sociotechnical Barriers to Telehealth Use in Labrador, Canada. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Springer 16 (6), 595-614. 21. Petersen, L.K., and Andersen, A.H. (2009). Socio-cultural Barriers to the Development of a Sustainable Energy System The Case of Hydrogen. Research Note. NERI No. 248, National Environmental Research Institute, Denmark. 22. Rogers, E. M. (1995). Diffusion of innovations. Simon and Schuster. 23. Ropohl, G. (1982). Some Methodological Aspects of Modeling Sociotechnical Systems. In Cybernetics and Systems Research 10, 525-536. 24. Ropohl, G. (1999) Philosophy of Sociotechnical Systems. In: Society for Philosophy and Technology, 4 (3). Available at: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v4n3/ 25. Springer. (2009). Identity in the Information Society. Springer Netherlands 1 (1). Available at: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1876-0678 26. US National Research Council. (2003). Who Goes There? Authentication through the Lens of Privacy. National Academy Press. 27. Welch, S. (1975). Sampling by Referral in a Dispersed Population. The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 2, pp. 237 2445. 28. Whitley, E.A., and Hosein, I. (2009). Global Challenges for Identity Policies. Palgrave Macmillan. 29. Windley, J. (2006). Digital Identity. O Reilly Media Inc.: California.

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An Empirical Analysis of the Diffusion, Adoption and the Future of ICT Mediated e-governance in Kerala: The FRIENDS Project A Critical Review
Prasanth Koothoor 1 , C.Pichandy1*, T.Padmanabhan1, R.Jayaseelan1, and Natchimuthu Munusamy 2 ABSTRACT Communication Technologies as an interface for enabling social, economic and political development has been experimented successfully the world over. In this paper such an attempt in e-governance experiment enabling ICT mediated citizen participation in the state of Kerala in India is investigated. The FRIENDS e-governance project in Kerala is 12 years old and this study empirically analyses its efficacy in terms of Reach and Access, Uses, Effects and the Future. A cross section of the beneficiaries across the state reveals interesting details conforming to the theoretical proposition that ICT mediated citizen participation is one of the most effective means in developing countries to achieve effective participation in e-governance. Keywords: e-governance, reach and access, uses, effects, future. 1. Introduction India is one of the few developing countries of the world which recognized the importance of ICT for development in the late 1980s itself. By launching the NICNET in the year 1987 followed by DISNIC by networking all the district offices in the country. Prior to 2006, the government of India launched its National E Governance plan (Negp), where the government of Indias select departments and state governments lead initiatives took steps to adopt e-governance and from then on, number of e-governance projects were implemented in India in various states. It is with a firm belief that eminent agriculture scientist Swaminathan (2006) suggested that ICTs can help us to leapfrog in the areas of knowledge and skill empowerment of rural poor. The poorer are poor only because of they have no assets like land, livestock or productive employment and they are often illiterate. This is where ICT can help impart speedy functional and adult literacy and market driven skills, echoing similar sentiments of Jawaharlal Nehru for the economic development of India and Vikram SaraBhais television for social development. As rightly pointed out by Sinclair (1962) that Aristotlian classification of governance has taken a technological face in the contemporary world from rule by one (dictatorship), a few (autocracy) and many (democracy) to that of a digital rule (globalization).In the changing landscape of merger of information and communication technologies, emerged e-governance, where, technology as an interface enabled the participation of citizens in the governance process. Thus the core mantra for the e-governance implementation is citizen participation and hence all the e-governance projects should be viewed from the perspective of James Hallorans (1990) research dictum that it is better to go away from the habit of what communication media does to people and to substitute for it the idea of what people do with the media. Perhaps that is precisely what the present study explores, investigating the e-governance project of the Government of Kerala, India-FRIENDS. Most of the studies related to e-governance projects in India are found to be descriptive, journalistic review analysis. There is virtually no empirical analysis of better quality, though modest attempt were
1

PSG College of Arts and Science, Coimbatore, India *Corresponding Author: (Email: cpichaandy@yahoo.co.in) 2 Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, India

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made by a few, these studies were limited to secondary data. Hence, taking this background, an empirical investigation as to how people utilize these e- governance project and what kind of impact they create on them, without dismissing access and reach factors, is explored in this study.* 2. Review of related literature The review of related literature focuses on studies related to REACH and ACCESS, USES and EFFECTS in a sequence and also the probable Future. Singh (2000), Jhunjhunwala (2006) Jayan Jose Thomas and Govindan Parayil (2004), Radha kumari (2004) and Venkatesan (2004), all of them have concurred with the potential reach of e- governances in India. However they have also highlighted the limited reach, because of lack of infrastructure facilities, linguistics and literacy barriers, isolated experiments, limited number of information centers, lack of power supply, the resistance of government employees, poor support from the citizen and lack of ICT awareness as major barriers hindering the reach of e-governance. Similarly, on the issue of access, Srikumar (2006) observers not only physical infrastructure but also social exclusion based on caste and gender prevent access. On similar lines, Mahapatra and Perumal (2006) opines that access to e-governance project in Indian citizens are limited to geographical locations and are not addressing the immediate needs of the population. Besides, they also opined that inadequacy of infrastructure, lack of bandwidth, storage space and literacy and the mindset of the citizens are preventing access. Shirin Madon (2009) argued that in developing countries large number of people do not have access due to educational background and lack of support in adopting the technology in their livelihood, which in turn bring about a local community divide, leave alone the broader digital divide. However, Jayan Jose Thomas, Govindan Parayil (2004) present a rosy picture of Akshya project with high levels of access from among socially backward community Pananiyar in comparison to a similar project at Kuppam in Andra Pradesh. They came out with disparities in terms of demographic variables such as gender, age and education. This observation is a reflection of Kenneth Keniston (2003), Cecchini and Raina (2002), and Warschauer (2003) observations that cast, gender and economic inequalities are influencing factors in accessing information kiosks in India and also rightly pointed out that people do not fall in love instinctively for newer technologies, as they are unfamiliar, strange, unnatural and always foreign and at times frightening device for those who are not familiar with them. Pandey, Geetika (2007) states that the hurdle for the access of e-governance project is because of the lack of readiness by the state government, policy makers and also by users in Indian context. Further, it was observed that these projects are more successful at micro level than at the macro level. Gupta (2004), Monga (2008) observes that the success story of SARI project in the state of Tamil Nadu and citizen service centers empowered the local people. Suresh Gnana Dhas and Ganesan (2011) emphasise that the community has a whole should be considered by providing equality of opportunity to access information, enabling the citizens technologically literates. Whereas, Sameer Sachdeva (2002) opines that e- enabled services can reach poor through post offices, which have the wider network and infrastructure in India, with the usage of local languages. On the usage of e- governance in India, Subash Batnagar et.al (2008) observes that citizens prefer the usage of computerized service delivery than manual delivery. Similar sentiments are shared by Monga (2008) Cecchini and Raina (2003), Venketarao (2008) Rahul De (2005) Radha kumari (2004), Govindaraju and Manibel (2010) and the colloquium on information technology enabled services lead by Chandra Shekhar et.al (2008) have expressed the willingness of the citizens to accept and use the ICT mediated services for e-governance. Yet another interesting research observed by Rahul De (2005) on AKSHAYA project in Malapuram district in Kerala, is the very high percentage of Muslim women, who utilised the facility which was also evident in the study of Madon et.al (2009). This is a significant reflective of the bench mark study of Pichandy, as early as in 1994 that when it comes to adoption of technology, the inclination of women dominate men especially in the marginalized rural societies in India which was later confirmed by the studies of Thomas (2003), Radha (2003) and Sri Hari (2006) under his supervision.

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On the effects of ICT mediated e-governance, Menou (1998) defines effect as change in the ability of people to satisfy their needs brought about by technology. In line with this, Monga (2008) appreciates the tremendous effect of SAMPARK in Chandigarh and the BHOOMI project in Karnataka. So also Preeti Mahajan (2009), who lauds the effects of e-governance initiatives in Punjab. Kaushik (2004) on BHOOMI project which eradicated corruption, Kulamani Padhi (2005) on the project under investigation FRIENDS as a delight to the people of Kerala and also Arun Babu, Nataraju (2008) commends the success of AKSHYA and KISSAN, the Kerala projects and the wider participation of the rural people. All these studies have detailed the tremendous scope of ICT enabled e-governance. Thus, taking into account, an overall view of the major factors namely reach and access, uses, effects and the future have been taken holistically for investigation in this study. With FRIENDS having widely being networked across Kerala with 14 centers at all district headquarters makes it a perfect platform to conduct a major study of this magnitude. 3. FRIENDS: A Background The south western state of Kerala in India is inhabited with nearly 4 cores of population, across 14 districts covering 38,863 Sq Kms with a unique background, with highest literacy rate, low birth and death rate and the sex ratio favoring women. FRIENDS e-governance project is a public oriented IT project initiated by the government of Kerala in the year 2000 and after the success of the pilot project at Trivandrum district, launched it in all the other 13 headquarters, The services of the departments covered under the schemes are:Motor vehicle department, Electrical Inspectorate, Kerala State Electricity Board(KSEB), Kerala Water Authority(KWA), Civil supplies department, Revenue department, Local body (Corporation/Muncipality), University, BSNL-Land line and mobile bills, Booking of railway tickets (Malappuram,Wayanad). 4. Special features The center works on all days (including Sunday) from 9am to 7 pm in two shifts. The center closes on every second Saturday and public holidays. Another important feature of FRIENDS is that there is no lunch break for the center. Each FRIENDS center is controlled by one project manager (PM) and two system administrators for two shifts, who are trained persons from Center for Development of Imaging Technology. (CDIT, a government of Kerala undertaking). The CSOs (Counter Service Officers) works in two shifts from 9 am to 2 pm and from 2pm to 7pm. Every FRIENDS center has ten counters and in Trivandrum it has 20. Each FRIENDS center is equipped with a help desk, general enquiry counter, waiting hall (air-conditioned) and a queue management system. Another feature of the center is that the posts of accountants, clerks or peons are not there. No user charges are obtained from citizens and from government departments, except BSNL. BSNL pays rupees 6 per transaction to the government as service charge. All other departments are deputing counter service officers (CSOs) from their departments to FRIENDS center. Payments in the counters are accepted in the form of cash and credit cards. But cheques and bank drafts are avoided. Reduced transaction time and cost in FRIENDS center during last few years witnessed more participation of citizens. 5. Method of study With the main objective of understanding the perception of those who use the FRIENDS projects across the state of Kerala in terms of reach and access, uses and its effects on them, the present investigation covered the entire state. At the first stage, the researchers mapped the 14 district headquarters and at the second stage, considering the viability of data collection clustered the centers (the adjoining district 228

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centers close by), thus arriving at 9 centers across the state for data collection, At the third stage, the researchers identified the regular users and administrated instrument developed for the study to the beneficiaries at the time of their visit to the center. At the fourth stage, the researchers explained the nature of research and the beneficiaries are requested to respond to the issues raised in the questionnaire. Thus, using the stratified random sampling, care was taken to include a cross section of the population who utilized the services. 750 samples that are completely answered were included for the study. The instruments were earlier validated after a pilot study at Thrissur center (r-0.721) with high reliability for the instrument used in the study. Age, gender, educational qualification and occupational status were the major independent variables and reach and access, uses and effects (level of satisfaction) are the dependent variables included in the study. For the purpose of realizing the objectives based on the review of related literatures, the following research questions are mooted in the study. - Do different categories of beneficiaries belonging to different age groups differs from one other with regards to perceiving the services of FRIENDS in terms of reach and access, uses, and its effect, besides also the future of e-governance. - Is there any effect of gender of the respondents on the perception of services of FRIENDS in terms of reach and access, uses and its effects, besides also the future of e-governance. - Is there any effect of educational qualification of the respondents on the perception of services of FRIENDS in terms of reach and access, uses and its effects, besides also the future of egovernance. - Is there any effect on occupational status of the respondents on the perception of services of FRIENDS in terms of reach and access, uses and its effects, besides also the future of egovernance. 6. Results and Discussions Sample characteristics The distribution of demographic characteristics of the individuals included in the study are presented below.

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The age of the respondents in term of gender is seen in the table presented above, indicating the number of samples in each category of age groups included in the study. Similarly the type of educational qualification of these respondents in terms of different age groups is given in the table II and in Table III, the occupation status of the respondents in terms of age groups is presented in detail. Thus to a greater extent the samples are distributed across the cross section of the beneficiaries of FRIENDS e-governance services. 7. Results of ANOVA The scores of the independent variables age, educational qualification, occupational status of respondents in terms of reach and access, uses, effects (level of satisfaction) and the future of e-governance were subjected to one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) by using the SPSS (version 14). Table IV (A): Mean Value. Results of one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) showing the effect of age of the respondents on the perception of reach and access, uses, effects (level of satisfaction) and the future of egovernance.

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The results of one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) as shown in the table above reveals that there is a significant effect of age of the respondents on the perception of the reach and access of the e-governance project (F-8.914), about the future of the e-governance (F-3.925) and the holistic view of FRIENDS egovernance. (F-3.300). Whereas, the age doesnt have any effect on uses or effect (level of satisfaction) of the services offered by FRIENDS The table of mean shows that the younger age groups of 21 to 30 (M-21.1579, 21.4419, 20.1846) show the higher degree of inclination towards reach and access of the services offered by FRIENDS followed by the age group of 46 and above (19.5625) compared to other age groups. Hence, it can be observed that the age groups of 21 to 30 and 46 and above have significant reception in terms of reaching and accessing the e- governance centers FRIENDS. The table of means also reveals that those who belong to the age group of 46 and above (F-12.269) have a significant effect on the perception of the future of FRIENDS e- governance followed by rest of the age groups and hence it can be concluded that the age group of 46 and above have considerable influence on the future of reaching out and accessing FRIENDS e-governance services. However similar beliefs can also be seen in other age groups excepting the age group of 26 to 30. The table of mean illustrates the perception of different age groups in terms of the holistic view of the utility of FRIENDS e-governance services. The age groups of 15 to 20, (F-71.9211), age groups of 21 to 25(F-70.0155), age groups 46 and above (F-69.7452) and age groups of 26 to 30 (F-68.0615) with a higher mean values show greater inclination towards the significant utility of FRIENDS e-governance services in Kerala.

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Hence, it can be categorically asserted that across the age groups of the respondents, the services of FRIENDS has significant influence, on the perception of the utility of FRIENDS e-governance in spite of certain perceivable barriers. Results of one way Analysis of variance (ANOVA) showing the effect of educational qualification of the respondents on the perception of reach and access, uses, effects (level of satisfaction) and the future of e-governance.

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The results of one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) presented in the table reveals that there is a significant result on the respondents Educational qualification and the perception of all the variables such as reach and access, uses, effect and the future of e-governance and also the utility of e-governance and services. (F-6.732, F-2.441, F-4.074, F-5.126) and the total benefits of e-governance (F-8.504). While reading the mean table it can be inferred that those respondents with lesser qualification from less than tenth standard to higher secondary level and the graduates consistently are being inclined towards reaching and accessing, using and also benefiting from the FRIENDS project. They also believe in the future benefits and clearly vote for the overall benefits of FRIENDS project. Hence, it can be concluded that across different educational groups of the respondents there is a wide acceptance from among the lesser educated and graduates compared to postgraduates. This phenomenon can be attributed to those with higher qualification may opt for online services, sitting at home. Table VI (A): Mean Value. Results of one way Analysis of variance (ANOVA) showing the effect of Occupational Status of the respondents on the perception of reach and access, uses, effects (level of satisfaction) and the future of e- governance.

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The results of one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) for the occupational status of the respondents in terms of perception of the reach and access of e-governance project FRIENDS (F-6.019) is significant. Similarly, there is a significant difference in perception is observed on the effects (level of satisfaction) (F-2.709). Also about the future of e-governance project (F-3.949) and the overall benefits of FRIENDS e-governance (F-2.469) is significant. The table of means show that the farmers, students, business, professional, retired (M-21.3775, 20.0833, 20.3571, 21.7273) show higher degree of inclination towards the reach and access of the services offered by FRIENDS. In terms of users, the farmers, students, business, retired (M-21.5400, 21.7285, 21.5833, 22.3636) show higher degree of inclination towards the uses of FRIENDS e-governance services. In terms of effects (level of satisfaction) the same group is showing high significance towards the FRIENDS services along with unorganized sector (M-16.8571). The table of means shows that farmers, business, house wives, retired and unorganized sectors (M-12.2400, 11.9167, 12.7865, 11.3636, 12.0000) indicate a positive attitude on the future of e-governance services FRIENDS. Hence, it may be inferred that among the respondents from various occupational status, there is a perceivable positive inclination towards receiving, accessing, using, benefiting and the future of services of FRIENDS e-governance project. 8. Results of T-test: Results of t-test showing the effect of gender of the respondents on the perception of reach and access, uses, effect and the future.

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Independent Samples Test

The result of t-test seen in the table above reveals that there is a significant difference on the gender of the respondent in the perception of reach and access of the FRIENDS service (t-2.381) when compared to other dependent variables. The table of means illustrates that men folk among the respondents seems to have wider reach towards the FRIENDS (M-20.1549 and 19.5059) when compared to other variables. However the table of means also reveals the women respondents (M-11.7708) belief in the future of e-governance when compared to men folk and the overall benefits of FRIENDS e-governance project, the male respondents feel better when compared to women respondents. Thus it can infer that there is a significant influence of the gender of respondents on the perception of reach and access of the FRIENDS e-governance services. However a mixed feeling among the gender of the respondents is also noticed. 235

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9. Discussion The findings of the study centers around the utility of ICT mediated e-governance services in terms of reach and access, uses, and effect, besides investigating into the beneficiaries perception of the future of ICT mediated services for e-governance. The results of the study corroborate, dominant patterns of belief in the utility of ICT as an interface for development among beneficiaries. The study reports a strong and favorable attitude among the disadvantaged and less educated in terms of reach and access, uses and effects. And the younger and old age groups look forward to more ICT mediated services in future to dispel the inequality and utility of services leading to gaps in the social, political and economic development, especially at the grass root levels, as observed by many scholars. Further the study affirms that the people with different occupational status also foresee a dominant role for the ICT mediated egovernance project. Similarly, the education of the respondents play a major role when it comes to reaching out to e-governance services, excepting those with higher qualifications, who may opt online services for themselves. Interestingly, the study observes those who are technologically, educationally disadvantaged and elders, traders, students, women and skilled workers are mere driven to technology as beneficiaries. Besides, Pichandys (1994, 2011) advocacy that ICT presents a window of opportunity from limited adoption to widespread diffusion in the developing countries is evident in the study. 10. Conclusion The present study explored some of the major theoretical formulations such as capacity building, the diffusion, uses and effects, structurisation and ICT mediation and justifiably found a proactive vibrancy among all sections of the beneficiaries of the FRIENDS e-governance project as an effective ICT mediated e-governance for development. However the researchers are conscious of the barriers that exist in the way of implementation and adoption. Nevertheless, FRIENDS is an example of a project which with to a certain extent leapfrog, if not, at least to a few of those barriers. The results of the study have a definite bearing on technological, socio-economic, educational and development policies of both central and state governments in India. 11. Acknowledgement The authors wish to record their appreciation to the department of IT mission, Government of Kerala and also those project managers FRIENDS at various districts and coordinators of FRIENDS for their encouragement and co-operation. Besides we are grateful to the respondents for their patient interaction. References 1. Arun Babu A, Nataraju M.S, GPKulraj M.P (2008), Extent of Participation of Beneficiaries in Information Communication Technology (ICT) Projects of Kerala State An Analysis. 2. Anil Monga (2008), E-Government in India Opportunities and challenges, JOAAG, Vol 3. No.2. 3. Chandrasekar R, Sanjay Dubey, Rajeev Chawla, Prakash Kumar, Nitin Kareer, Sanjay varma, V Venkata Rao, and Subhash Bhatnagar (coordinator 2008), Impact Assessment of e-governance project: A bench mark for the future. 4. Cecchini S, Raina M (2002) Warana: The case of an Indian rural community adopting information and communication technology. 5. Cecchini S, Raina M (2003), Electronic Government and Rural and Poor: The case of Gyandoot information technology in developing countries. 6. Govindaraju P, Maani Mabel M (2010), The status of Information and Communication Technology in a coastal village: A case study IUEDICT, 2010. Vol 6, issue 1. 7. Gupta M P (2004), Promise of E-Governance operational challenges, Tata McGraw Hill Publication Company limited, New Delhi, India. 8. Holloran, D. James (1990) Developments in Communication and Democracy. Theme paper presented to the International Association for Mass Communication Research (IAMCR), Bled. 9. Jayanjose Thomas and Govindan parayil (2004) bridging the social and Digital divides in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala: A capabilities approach. 236

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10. Jhun Jhunwala, Ashok, Anuradha Ramachandran and Sangmitra Ramachandran (2006) connecting rural India: Taking a step back for two forward Information Technology in developing countries, Vol 16, No.1 (February 2006), Telecommunications and Computer Networks Group, Madras, IIT Madras. 11. Kaushik P D (2004), E-Governance: Government Initiatives in India. 12. Kennth Keniston and Deepak Kumar (2003), The four Digital Divides, New Delhi:Sage. 13. Kulamani Padhi (2005) Strategies in Good Governance: A case study of Karnataka, Kerala and Orissa Orissa review 2005. 14. Menov M (1998), Does information make any difference: British Library Research and Innovation Center Research bulletin, Vol 12, Fall 1998 PP 10-12. 15. Neeraj Panday and Geetika (2007), Strategic Marketing of e-government for Technology Adoption Facilitation. 16. Pichandy C (1994), A study of uses and effects of home video (VCR Technology) on the Urban and Rural Audience: Ph.D Thesis of Bharathiar University, Coimbatore. 17. Prasanth Koothoor, Pichandy C (2011), User Typology and Effectiveness of ICT-Enabled Local Governance Project: An Analytical Study of FRIENDS in Trivandrum, Indian Journal of Communication, Vol 3, No 1. 18. Preeti Mahajan (2009), E-Governance Initiatives in India with Special Reference to Punjab Asia Pacific Journal of Social Sciences vol.I(1), Jan June 2009. 19. Radha G (2003), A study of new media divide between the Urban poor and Rich in Coimbatore. 20. Radhakumari Ch (2004), Information Technology and its Role in the Society- A case study of two southern states of India. 21. Radhakumari Ch (2005), A Business Process Reengineering and e-governance model Kaveri of Karnataka. 22. Rahhunath Mahapatra, Sinnakkrishnan Perumal (2006), E-governance in India: A strategic framework. 23. Rahul De (2005), The Impact of Indian Government initiatives: Issues of poverty and vulnerability reduction and conflict. 24. Srihari M (2006) A Study of the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (Information Kiosks) on the residents of Melur Taluk in Madurai District, South India: Ph.D Thesis of Bharathiar University, Coimbatore. 25. Suresh Gnana Dhas C and Ganesan V (2011), E-Village Pedagogical Behavior from E-Government through VSAT A case study, Research journal of Information Technology ISSN 2041-3114. 26. Swaminathan M.S (2006), Empowering the Poor Foreword. 27. Sameer Sachdeva (2002), E-Governance Strategy in India. 28. Sreekumar, T.T (2006), ICTs for the rural poor: Civil society and cyber-libertarian developmentalism ion India. 29. Shirin Madon, Nicolav Reinhard, Dewald Roode, Geoff Walsham (2009), Digital Inclusion Projects in Countries: Process of Developing Institutionalisation. 30. Shirin Madon, Nicolau Reinhard, Dewald Roode, Geoff Walsham (2009), Digital Inclusion Projects in Developing Countries: Process of Institutionalisation information technology of development, Vol 15(2), 95-107 (2009). 31. Sinclair (1962) Quated from Kul;amani Padhi (2005). 32. Singh S H (2000), Ways and means of bridging the gap between developed and developing countries caused in October, 2004 from http://www.mitgov.in 33. Thomas P E (2003), The influence of some factors on the determinants affecting the emerging information society. 34. Venkatesan V.S (2004), Towards an E-Government Issues in developing countries. 35. Warschauer, M (2003), Technology and social inclusion: Rethinking the digital divide. Boston: MIT Press.

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Financial Services for bankless villages a facet of Financial Inclusion: the succeeding tale in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka
Ch. Radhakumari 1 * and M.R. Geetha Bala1 ABSTRACT The level of banking exclusion varies across the countries and the world. For improving the access of banking services to the hitherto unbanked rural areas, Financial Inclusion (FI) has been identified as an instrument. For the purpose of the present study State Bank of India and the villages under its jurisdiction in the States of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are identified. The study primarily aims at understanding whether the present route of implementation of FI is matching with the expected direction of the RBI. Two villages as one each from both the States with 60 respondents from each village are selected on the basis of systematic sampling. The primary data obtained on the basis of the questionnaires made, constituted the basis for interpretation and drawing conclusions. The study highlights that implementation of the policy of FI is proceeding in the required direction as laid down by the policy makers. In general the villagers expressed tremendous fulfillment over the efforts for taking the banking services to their villages. The study further underlines that the bank adopts two different techniques in both the States, as Kiosk Banking in Andhra Pradesh and Mobile Banking in Karnataka for implementing the FI.

Keywords: Financial Inclusion, Kiosk Banking, Mobile Banking, Unbanked areas, No-frill accounts

1. Introduction
Financial Inclusion broadly refers to the delivery of banking and other financial services to the people in rural villages who have had no access to these services as they are not available in the villages. This concept is also termed as Financial Exclusion. The level of banking exclusion varies across the countries and the world. However, it is the same group of people everywhere who are affected by this Financial Exclusion. People who have low income or no source of regular income, who lack capabilities that can be converted into labour and who have the history of bad debts and so on, are excluded from availing the financial services. In the light of the generally accepted belief that improving access to various financial services in the hitherto neglected rural villages would contribute to bridging the rural-urban divide, Financial Inclusion (FI) has become the time-honored instrument. Keeping in pursuance of the directions of RBI, all the Commercial and other banks have taken up the task of working towards Financial Inclusion.

2. Review of Literature:
In 2007-08 the Government had set up two Funds i.e., Financial Inclusion Fund (FIF) and Financial Inclusion Technology Fund (FITF) with a corpus of Rs. 500 crore each under NABARD. The purpose was to extend banking services to the unbanked areas. In the budget of 2009-10 the Government has further contributed rupees 100 crore to each of these funds in order to strengthen the pace of development of FI. The contributors to these funds are Government of India, RBI and NABARD.
1

Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning, India *Corresponding Author: (Email: chradhakumari@sssihl.edu.in)

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The Finance Ministry also introduced FI index from June, 2010 onwards in order to assess the progress of FI at the end of every quarter and in various regions of the country. The roadmap for expanding the penetration of banking activities in unbanked and under-banked areas was created with the help of FI Index. In the year 2010-11 the Ministry had also identified two criteria to judge the performance of CEOs of public sector banks. The two criteria adopted are number of additional branches covered and the new no-frill accounts opened. But till now no systematic studies have been made to assess the progress of FI, the degree of its penetration in the villages; and its impact on the lives of customers. Therefore the present study would be one among the first few scientific studies conducted in the direction of assessing the progress of FI and its impact on the lives of the customers in the villages. This would constitute the source for further research of this kind in the area of FI.

3. Need and Significance of the study:

Banking/financial services are in the nature of public goods. Every citizen of India has the right to have access to these goods. The open and efficient society stresses on the need that there should be unrestrained access of all the public goods and services to all the citizens of the country. The main objective of the present FI policy is to make available the banking, financial and other payment services to the entire population of the country without any discrimination. Hence, consistent efforts are being made to examine the causes of financial exclusion; and the strategies adopted to ensure FI of the poor and underprivileged, at national and international level. As the reasons for financial exclusion vary from country to country, the strategies for plugging the holes of financial exclusion also differ. However both the developed and developing countries are making serious efforts for FI in order to bring about the balanced economic growth. In this context, under the directions of the RBI, India too has initiated the process of implementing the strategies for bringing about total FI in the country. The concept of FI has made the first move to deliver the banking and other financial services at an affordable cost to vast sections of the disadvantaged and low income groups in the villages. FI has been initiated in almost all the States of India. The Commercial banks in India have launched these services under the name CITIZEN SERVICE POINT (CSP) in all the villages having more than 2000 population, as a first phase. We have almost touched the deadline of 2012 set for achieving the cent percent FI in the country. Unless simultaneous efforts are made to analyse scientifically whether the efforts being made are taking us in the required direction, we cannot avoid the danger of total deviation from the required track. Under the above backdrop, the present research study is an attempt to make an analysis of, how far the set objective of FI has been achieved in the direction of providing financial services in the villages and their utilization by the rural communities.

4. Objectives of the study:

The present research work is undertaken with the following two categories of objectives: - Primary Objective: To understand whether the present route of implementation of Financial Inclusion is matching with the expected direction of the policy makers. - Secondary objectives: To judge whether opening the no-frill accounts has helped the customers in avoiding accessing the informal sources of financing in the villages. If not, to highlight the reasons for the villagers to continue to depend on the informal sources of financing. 239

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To understand the reasons for opening the no-frills saving bank Accounts; To highlight whether there is any relation between age and awareness about the financial services launched in the villages among the customers/users in the villages. To identify whether the level of education among the customers has any relation with the: - Awareness about the financial services launched among the villagers; and the method of functioning of the same, in the villages. - Saving habit among the customers. - Their capacity to put signature to authenticate their transactions, - Their attitude to motivate others to enjoy the benefit of opening the no-frill accounts. To bring to light whether there is any relation between awareness among the customers about the financial services offered in the villages and their approaching informal sources. Finally, to collect suggestions from the customers for improving the functional efficiency of the policy of FI.

5. Methodology and Statistical tools applied:

All the Commercial banks are equally vigorously involved in implementing the scheme of FI. For the purpose of the present study, State Bank of India, which is the lead bank in initiating and implementing the scheme and the villages under its jurisdiction, are identified. Two villages as one each from both the States of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, which are comparable on all fronts and where the financial services are being provided as part of the policy of FI, are selected at random. Accordingly, Kallumadi in the district of Anantapur in the State of Andhra Pradesh and Sasanakunte in the district of Tumkur in Karnataka are chosen for the study. From the villages thus selected, 60 customers each are further identified on the basis of systematic sampling. This makes the total sample of the size of 120. A preliminary survey was conducted by the authors in one of the villages in Andhra Pradesh under SBI jurisdiction to understand the method of functioning of the Customer Service Point (CSP) from the point of view of Business Correspondents (BC) and the customers / users. Based on the knowledge gained from the pilot study a detailed questionnaire was developed for collecting the information from the customers of CSP in both the States. The primary data thus obtained was classified, analyzed and tested for the interdependency of various factors using one of the most popular statistical techniques known as the Chisquare test. This test was applied for the null hypotheses (Ho) where Ho is framed with the assumption that the attributes under consideration are not dependent on each other. The results were then interpreted and the conclusions were drawn as follows. If the Chi-square calculated value is less than the table value, Ho is accepted, otherwise Ho is rejected. The percentages and graphical presentation of the results were also used where necessary.

6. Hypotheses:
For assessing the experiences of villagers with respect to the utilization of financial services offered by the banks in the villages, the following hypotheses were set: - Ho: Opening the no-frill accounts as part of the FI measure has not helped the villagers in reducing their dependence on informal sources of financing. - Ho: Age of the customers who opened the no-frill accounts and the awareness of customers about the financial services provided in the villages are not related to each other. - Ho: The level of education among the customers ( users) of these facilities has no relation with: Awareness about the financial services launched and the method of functioning of the same among the villagers. - The saving habit among the villagers. - Capacity to put signature to authenticate the transactions 240

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- Attitude to motivate others about the services Ho: There is no relation between awareness among the villagers about the financial services offered and the need for approaching the informal sources for meeting their financial requirements.

7. Results and Discussion of the study:

The results of the study are discussed under four groups as: - Implementation of FI in both the States. - Experiences of the customers with financial services offered through Business Correspondents (BC) in the selected villages from both the States. - Critical Success Factors. - Suggestions from BCs and customers for improving the functional efficiency of CSPs for realizing the final objective of FI. 7. 1 Implementation of FI in the two States: All the Commercial Banks are seriously involved in the implementation of the policy of FI in both the States, as directed by the RBI. To avoid overlapping of the work relating to the initiation of Customers Service Points (CSP) in different villages, each Commercial Bank is allotted a specific number of villages which would fall under their jurisdiction, making that bank responsible for achieving the cent percent FI in those villages. While the mode of operation of the CSP differs from bank to bank; and from State to State, the center point of operation remains to be the Business Correspondent (BC)- CSP model for all the banks. In the State of Andhra Pradesh, a youth within the age group of 25 to 35 years, belonging to the same village, having minimum knowledge of the required technology employed by the banks, is selected as the BC. BCs thus selected are trained, encouraged and assured of all the needed support for starting the CSPs in their villages. In the district of Anantapur, BCs themselves are working as CSPs in all the villages. Following the technique of Kiosk Banking, the State Bank of India in Andhra Pradesh is offering the financial services to villagers through the selected individual BCs. In the State of Karnataka, institutions are appointed as BCs who in turn have district supervisors to oversee the functioning of CSPs in each village under their jurisdiction. Institutions such as ZMF, OXIZEN, SKDRDP are working as BCs for the State of Karnataka. Each institution working as BC for the bank is allotted certain number of villages for starting the CSPs. Following the technique of Mobile Banking, these BC are supporting the financial services offered by the CSPs to the villagers. For the present in both the States, no-frill accounts opened are being used for depositing, withdrawing, fund transferring, and online withdrawal. (from BC points alone) It is likely that these no-frill accounts will also be used for crediting the old age pensions, crop subsidies, sanctioned loans and such other benefits, in near future. Efforts are also being made by the bank to create awareness among all the villagers in its allotted villages, about the procedure to be followed for opening the no-frill accounts and making use of the services offered at the Kiosk. The list of dos and donts for customers for making use of the services is displayed at every CSP in the villages in Andhra Pradesh. Along with the above, a list of banking products and services available at the CSP is also displayed. 7.2 Experiences of the customers with financial services offered through the CSP by the Business Correspondents (BC): Variables such as age, level of education, awareness about the CSP and various services offered at the CSP, saving habit, capacity to put signature, ability to motivate others in the village about the use of the services offered, dependence on informal sources of financing such as money lenders, friends etc. were

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chosen for analyzing their interrelationship to understand various aspects relating to the launching of banking services in the villages. The results are discussed as under: a) The study reveals that opening no-frill accounts in the villages as part of the policy of FI, has helped the customers in reducing accessing the informal sources to meet their financial needs, in both the States. (Table-1; Fig 1; Annexure-I). This proves that making villagers open the nofrill accounts is giving them the confidence that the required financial services would be offered to them by the banks when they need; and hence dependence of customers on informal sources of finances in villages is noticed decreasing. Figure 1: Relation between opening the no-frills account and dependence on informal sources of finance

A.P&Karnataka

Yes:A.P&Karnataka No:A.p&Karnataka

b) Interaction with the customers brought to focus that almost 80% of the customers in both the States opened the no-frill accounts with the idea of putting in some amount for future use. While as high as 33% of them opened the accounts for various other reasons such as depositing money to give education to children or meet other family requirements such as childrens marriages or construction of a small house etc.; in Karnataka, a mere 18% of them opened accounts for this purpose. Another 18% percentage of them said that the account could be used for reasons like receiving scholarship for children or government subsidy or old age pension etc, 10% of the customers reiterated that they would like to use this account to take loans from the bank to avoid borrowing from local money lenders in Andhra Pradesh while this percentage is negligible in Karnataka. The least of 6.67% of them in Andhra Pradesh said that they opened the accounts to pay loan installments on their borrowings from banks. (Table 2; Fig 2; Annexure-I). This indicates that even villagers are conscious of the need of finances for future use. Because of the unavailability of the facility in villages, it is observed that the villagers lack motivation to save money. If this factor is given due consideration, it will result in dual benefit as services availability in the villages and improvement in the business growth of banks.

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Figure 2: Reasons for opening the no-frill accounts in both the States
3500% 3000% 2500% 2000% 1500% 1000% 500% 0% Savingfor Payloan tobefree future instalments from informal sources AndhraPradesh Karnataka

Meet family needs

other reasons

c) Analysis of the relation between age of the customers and their awareness about the banking services offered in the villages reveals that the two attributes are independent. (Table 3; Fig 3; Annexure-I) For getting to know about any new service launched in the villages, it is the interest in the human beings that matters and not the age factor, as proved by the study. Figure 3: Relation between age and awareness about the services at BC point
4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 1820 2135 3650 Above50 A.P Karnataka

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d) Rejection of Ho for assessing the relation between the level of education among the customers one hand; and their awareness about the financial services offered in the village; their saving habits, their capacity to put the signature, and their attitude to motivate others to use the given financial services on the other, reveals that the level of education is dependent on all these variables. This implies that higher the level of education, greater is the awareness among the customers. It appears that the educated are more eager to know about the new facilities that come to their village than uneducated. Educated seem to develop zeal to save money even if it is in small amounts; and if convinced, are ready to motivate and convince others about the facilities they are aware off. (Tables-4,5,6,7; Annexure-I; Fig 4: ) This made the authors understand that it is very easy to get the cooperation from the villagers for implementing any scheme. We can make villagers understand any philosophy through mere creation of awareness. The situation is same in both the States. Fig 4: Relation between the level of education and capacity to sign

40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Yes No

A.P Karnataka Karnataka A.P

e) Table-8 in Annexure-I, Fig 8, indicates that customers awareness about the banking services available in the villages is not related to their dependence on the informal sources of financing. Until the tangible benefits of informal sources supersede the existing formal financial services in the villages, their dependence on informal sources of financing will continue to exist, in every village in each State.

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Fig-5: Relation between awareness and approaching informal sources

120 100 80

No: Karnataka
60 40 20 0 Yes No

Yes: Karnataka NO: A.P Yes:A.P

f) Overall impact of launching banking services in the unbanked villages: While all the customers/users in both the States in unison understand and agree that the banking services launched in their villages are definitely useful to them, but the users of the services are still not able to assess in concrete terms whether these services have improved their present income level, saving level, childrens education, helped in using the no-frill account to repay their loans and has got them the financial freedom that would result in the betterment of their general standard of living and their overall status in the society. 7.3 Critical Success Factors: These factors represent the most important parameters that contributed to the successful launching of banking services in the unbanked areas of the villages in both the States, for bringing about cent percent Financial Inclusion. - BCs being one among the villagers in Andhra Pradesh This constituted the most critical factor for the success of the CSP in the villages of Andhra Pradesh. As the selected Business Correspondents belong to the same village, they are able to gain quick response from the villagers. If an outsider was brought into the village for the same purpose, whether similar results in the form of response from the villagers could be achieved or not, is the question to be answered only after experimentation. - Confidence of Villagers in the selected BC: During the investigation it was noticed that many villagers in these villages, opened the no-frill accounts because of their trust and confidence in the BC rather than their understanding of the services offered. It is also noticed during the study that majority of the villagers are not even aware that the CSP functioning in the village is a unit of the State Bank of India. - Zeal and Enthusiasm of the BCs: It was further observed that the BCs in the selected villages are highly self-motivated and serviceoriented individuals. Interaction with them revealed that their sole aim is to render as much service as possible to their villagers for which they are ready to undergo any kind of trouble or face any problems what so ever. - Public Relation Maintenance Capacity of the BCs: 245

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The capacity of the BCs in creating awareness and understanding among the villagers about the financial services launched and their future benefit to the villagers, is going a long way in motivating the villagers to participate in the Financial Inclusion plans of the RBI. - Villagers difficulties with the main banks: Some villagers have already experienced the difficulties involved in opening an account in the bank; getting loan sanctioned and release of the same; getting government subsidies released; getting the granted scholarships credited to their accounts, getting drats made, transferring funds and so on. In most of the villages getting any work related to the bank meant loss of one or two working days. This understanding has made many elderly villagers quickly respond to the CSP services. - Mobile Banking Technology in the State of Karnataka has wiped off the network connectivity problems that the Kiosk Banking technology is facing in Andhra Pradesh. - Individual BC model of Andhra Pradesh is generating quick results to the villagers leading to speedy FI as against institutional BC model of Karnataka.

7.4

Suggestions:

The suggestions offered by the Business Correspondents and the customers for improving the performance efficiency of the FI policy, are gathered from both the States; and presented below: 7.4 a) Suggestions from the BCs: Helping the BCs in solving the severe network connectivity problems faced by them. Giving BCs the solution to what to do next?. Many BCs are unable to understand what is to be done next, after opening the no-frill accounts for all the villagers in their alloted villages, which meant stagnation to their income. Showing a continuous source of income to BCs by leveraging their services to empower the villagers on one hand; and to fulfill the purpose of setting up of CSPs on the other, by adding more banking products and services to the CSPs through BCs. Based on the performance of the work assigned, a certain percentage of commission on each transaction relating to every added banking product and service can be given to each BC to assure continuity to their income. In some villages, recognition to these banking services is forth coming only because of the confidence of villagers in the good attitude of BCs. To support BCs and to make villagers understand that the CSPs are the direct units of the State Bank of India, frequent visits of the concerned bank officers to the villages is a must, which is missing right now. To achieve the dual goal of empowerment of villagers and the viable functioning of the CSPs, CSPs can be used for providing more banking products and services. Helping villagers engage in income-generating activities more financial support needs to be given through CSPs, which in turn assures the support for CSPs workable functioning. This would increase the transaction rate of the CSPs besides enabling villagers in getting more banking services to their door step which would empower their lives. Allotment of a toll free number to clarify the doubts of BCs and for resolving the grievances of the customers. b) Suggestions from Customers: Replacement of the present Voucher receipt for each transaction with the issue of regular passbook. Issue of ATM cards at least to those no-frill account holders who fulfill the basic requirement for the same. The money that the villagers get under the village employment guarantee scheme presently through the post offices be routed through the CSPs accounts in the villages. 246

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Provision should be made for recovering the SHGs loans through these accounts which is not done at present. SHG members have to visit the bank branches for repaying their loans involving cost, time and other inconveniences. All the utility bill payments also may be accepted through these accounts to avoid any scope of manipulations involved in direct cash collections by the concerned clerks. (Electricity bill payments are collected directly in cash) Right now the old age pensions are being disbursed to them in the form of cash by the village secretary. For any reason if any person is not available at the time of distribution he/she will not get back the amount. If this amount could be credited to these CSP accounts, all the hassles of the pensioners can be put an end to. CSP accounts may also be considered for banking products like sanctioning of small loans and their disbursements. Right now provision for opening of joint account is not there at the CSP. At least if a provision is made to open a joint account with a minor child, scholarships can be received to these accounts. Under the ICDS (Integrated Childrens Development Society) Female children receive money at the rate of ` 5,000 per head. If this amount could be credited to these CSP joint account of parents with the child, many problems associated with direct cash receipt and payment can be avoided. More efforts may be made to increase the confidence of the workers on the stability of the CSPs; and that the CSPs are part of the main Banks business. Assurance has to be given to the customers in the villages that whatever banking transaction takes place at CSP, it will simultaneously be done in the main bank and that it amounts to the villagers transacting directly with the bank. It is also suggested that loans may be given to the unemployed youth in the villages through the CSPs without any present security but based on their prospective income. Loans may be sanctioned based on the security of some certificates like NSCs or FDs or balances in the RD accounts through the CSPs.

8. Conclusions The study highlights that implementation of the policy towards achieving the cent percent Financial Inclusion is proceeding in the required direction as laid down by the policy makers. In general the villagers expressed tremendous fulfillment over the governmental efforts for taking the banking and other financial services to their villages for bettering their lives. The customers of Andhra Pradesh expressed total satisfaction over employing one among them as the Business Correspondent for operating the CSPs.
The study further reiterated that the villagers in both the States are responding to the banking services offered in their villages due to their trust and faith in the BCs rather than based on their awareness about what is being done by the banks. This necessitates more efforts on the part of the banks in making frequent visits to the CSPs and assuring the villagers that the CSPs are part and parcel of their overall banking business. Finally the villagers desired for converting the CSPs into mini banks for getting all the banking products and services to the villages itself.

9. Further scope of the study

The present study marks the very beginning stage in the scientific analysis of the impact of implementation of the policy of FI. In this paper the effectiveness of the Financial Inclusion programme launched by SBI has been studied by considering a sample of 120, constituting 60 users from two districts spread across both the States. The study can be further extended to the other villages under the same banks jurisdiction or villages where other nationalized banks are involved, so as to have a more detailed analysis. In addition, we can also consider the practical difficulties faced by the BCs who are directly involved in the implementation 247

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of the scheme of Financial Inclusion in the villages, by taking them as sample units. Besides, the critical comparison of the technologies adopted by different banks in providing this facility can also be done on similar lines from supply side.

10. Acknowledgements
The authors submit this work at the Lotus Feet of Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba whose invisible blessings and grace guided them in all their endeavours. The authors express their deep sense of gratitude to the Regional Manager, SBI, Smt. Ratna Kumari, and her team members involved in the implementation of Financial Inclusion Policy in Anantapur District, and to Shri Pattabhi, incharge of FI in the head office of the SBI, Karnataka; for encouraging us to take up this project with an assurance of supplying the required data along with other necessary support. Our deep gratitude is also due to Sri B. Narayana Swamy, Chief Councillor, FLCC (Financial Literacy and Credit Councilling), Anantapur, for sparing his valuable time to educate the authors about the functioning of the policy of Financial Inclusion in the District of Anantapur besides giving us the necessary secondary data. Special thanks are due to Sri. Prof. K.L.A.P Sharma, Department of Statistics, Sri Krishna Devaraya University, Anantapur, for his excellent guidance in the selection and application of statitistical techniques relating to all our research work. References: 1. Kempson E, A. Atkinson and O. Pilley. 2004. Policy Level Response to Financial Exclusion in Developed Economies: Lessons for Developing Countries. University of Bristol. 2. Buckland, J., and B. Guenther (2005): 'There Are No Banks Here, Financial and Insurance Exclusion in Winnipeg North End', Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (September). 3. Kempson, E. 2006. Policy Level Response to Financial Exclusion in Developed Economies: Lessons for Developing Countries, Paper for Access to Finance: Building Inclusive Financial Systems, World Bank, Washington, May. 4. Kamath, Raghav. 2007, Branchless Banking: Corp Banks Answer for Financial Inclusion CAB Calling July-September; Vol. 31, No. 3. 5. Rajan, M.S.S. 2007. Replication of Financial Inclusion: Oppor tunities and Challenges Indian Bank Experience; CAB Calling July-September, Vol.31, No.3. 6. Indian Bank Website, www.indianbank.in 7. Bank of Scotland. 2007. Delivering our Financial Inclusion Agenda in Scotland, March. 8. H.M. Treasury. 2007. Financial Inclusion: the Way Forward, HM Treasury, UK, March. 9. Asian Development Bank. 2007. Low Income Households Access to Financial Services International Experience, Measures for Improvement, and the Future. EARD Special Studies, October. 10. Jha, B.K. 2008, Role of Banking Services in Rural Entrepreneurship (A case study of Sultanpur District,U.P.) published in Banking Finance. 11. Government of India. 2008. Report of the Committee on Financial Inclusion in India (Chairman Dr. C. Rangarajan),January. 12. World Bank. 2008. Finance for All Policy and Pitfalls in Expanding Access. The World Bank, Washington, D.C. 13. Reserve Bank of India Report on Financial Inclusion 4th September 2008. 14. Barik B.B. 2009, Financial Inclusion and Empowerment of Indian Rural Households.

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Annexure: I Statistical Tables: Table 1: Relation between opening the no-frills accounts and dependence on informal sources among customers Opening Dependence on Informal Sources of Financing account and Awareness Andhra Karnataka Pradesh Yes Yes Total Yes 27 47 74 No 5 13 18 Total 32 60 92
2

= 6.7809

Ho rejected

Table 2: - Reasons for opening the no-frill accounts by the customers Andhra Pradesh Reasons Number Percentage To save for future 48/60 80 To pay loan installments 4/60 6.67 To be free from taking loans 6/60 10 from money-lenders To give education to 11/60 18 children/meet other family needs Any other reasons include to 11/60 18 receive scholarship, to avoid travelling long distances, to use anytime available facility in the village etc.

Karnataka Number Percentage 47/60 78 2/60 3 1/60 2 1/60 2

20/60

33

Table: 3 - Relation age and awareness about the services at BC point Age Users/Customers In years Andhra Pradesh Karnataka 18 -20 5 6 21-35 22 24 36-50 16 13 Above 50 5 7 Total 48 50 2 = 0.973 Ho accepted

Total 11 46 29 12 98

Level of education NIL Below 10th Between 10th and

Table 4: Relation between level of education and awareness about the CSP Andhra Pradesh Karnataka Yes 22 24 7 No 3 3 1 249 Yes 11 18 25 No 3 2 1

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P.G Total

Level of education NIL Below 10th Between 10th and P.G Total

53 7 54 = 22.36 Ho -- rejected Table: 5- Relation Between level of education and saving habit Andhra Pradesh Karnataka
2

Yes 20 19 8
2

No 6 6 1 13 Ho is rejected

Yes 6 16 19 41

No 9 4 5 18

47 17.19

Education Yes No Total

2

Table: 6- Relation Between level of education and Capacity to sign Andhra Pradesh Karnataka 8 40 12 12 20 52 = 79.78 Ho is rejected

Table: 7- Relation Between level of education and motivating others Level of education Andhra Pradesh Karnataka Total NIL 22 16 38 Below 10th 27 18 45 Between 10th and P.G 11 26 37 Total 60 60 120 2 = 8.83 Ho is rejected

Level of awareness Yes No Total

Table:8- Relation between awareness and approaching informal sources Customers Karnataka Total Yes 28 3 31 = 3.64 No 25 4 29 Ho accepted Yes 40 2 42 No 11 3 14

104 12 116

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Annexure II A) Questionnaire for Customers/users QUESTIONNAIRE ON FINANCIAL INCLUSION (For Customers) 1. General Profile of the Customer: c) Village a) District b) Mandal 1.1. Name of the member: 1.2. Caste 1.3.Sex 1.4.Age 1.5.Education 1.7: Are you able to put your signature: YES/NO 1.8: Your daily income: 2. Savings related information: 2.1 Do you generally save your money? YES/NO 2.2 Prior to opening account at CSC, where were you depositing your savings? a) Post office b) Bank c) Mahila Bank (SHG) d) Chits e) Private lending f) Cooperative Bank g) Any otherspecify 3.Account 0pening details: ( with BC) 3.1. Since how many months you have been the customer at this CSC? a) Less than 6 months b) between 6 and 12 months c) More than 12months 3.2 Amount of initial deposit: 3.3. Amount of current daily saving: 3.4 Did you face any problem while opening or operating the account with the BC? Yes/No 3.4.1 If yes, please specify: 3.5. Reasons for opening the account: c) to repay the loan instalments a) to get awareness b) to serve the society c) to enjoy better health d) to save for future e) to be free from other informal sources h) to enjoy financial freedom f) to give education for children g) any other (specify) 4. Financial Services at the BC point: 4.1 Services provided at the BC point: a) Deposits b) Remittances c) Insurance (specify)

d) Withdrawals

e) Fund transfers

f) Any other

4.2 Are you aware of various services available with BC? 4.2.1 If yes, how did you get to know? Please specify? 4.3 How do you authenticate your transactions? b) Thump impression a) Signature

YES/NO

4.4 What you feel is the next urgent facility that you require from this point? a) loan Repayment b) Loan sanctioning and disbursement c)Draft facility d) Payment for utility services 5. Loan details:

5.1 Details of Loans availed: internal loan, SHG loan and other Private loans Category Purpose Principal Rate of Date Amount Amount of loan amount Interest of loan paid to be 251

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paid

5.1.1 Are you still approaching the informal sources of financing (Money-lenders) 5.1.2 If yes, please specify the reasons: 6. Economic benefits of opening of an account in the Bank: 6.1. Whether it was useful to your business/occupation YES/NO 6.1.1 If no, Can it be due to the following reasons? a) Limit of loan insufficient b) not aware of loan facility c) did not get good response at the bank/BC point d) did not get required guidance at BC point e) all the above

Yes/No

6.2. What is your present weekly income ? a) < 1000 b) Between 100 and 1500 c) Above 1500 6.3 Are you financially independent after opening an account YES/NO 6.4 According to you, is it safe to keep the savings with the BC point or other sources? 6.5 If other sources, please specify: 7. Do you think that opening of SB account at this BC point has benefited you in improving any of the following ways? a) Income levels Yes/NO b) Saving level Yes/No c) Standard of living Yes/No d) Childrens education Yes/No e) To meet Health Emergencies Yes/No f) Status in the society Yes/NO g) Financial freedom Yes/No h) Repay the loans Yes 8. Do you share this information; and motivate the members of the village to avail these benefits? YES/NO 10. In your opinion, what are present problems implementing the FI plan of the Govt.? Pleae specify:

11. What suggestions do you offer to improve the performance efficiency of FI ****************************** Annexure II --B) Questionnaire for non-users of the facility at the CSP: QUESTIONNAIRE ON FINANCIAL INCLUSION (For Non Users) 1. General Profile of the Customer: a) District b) Mandal 1.2. Name of the respondent: 1.2. Caste 1.3.Sex 1.4.Age 1.6. Members in the family: Relation Sex Age Education with 252

c) Village 1.5.Education Occupation

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members

2. Savings related information: 2.1 Where do you deposit your savings? a) Post office b) Bank c) Mahila Bank (SHG) d) Chits e) Private lending f) Cooperative Bank g) Any otherspecify 2.2 Are you aware of the services BC point is offering? Yes/No 2.3. If yes, why are you not availing the facility? Please specify. 3. Are you aware of various services available with BC? YES/NO

3.1 If yes, how did you get to know? please specify? 4. Loan details: 4.1. Details of Loans availed: internal loan, SHG loan and other Private loans Category Purpose Principal Rate of Date of Amount of loan amount Interest % loan paid

Amount to be paid

5.1.1 Are you still approaching the informal sources of financing? Yes/No 5.1.2 If yes, please specify the reasons: 6. What is your present weekly income? a) < 1000 b) Between 1000 and 2000 c) 1500 and above 6.1. Are you financially independent? YES/NO 6.1.1 If no, who supports you financially? a) Spouse b) Children c) Parents d) others (specify) 7. According to you, is it safe to keep the savings with informal sources? Yes/No 8. what do you feel when people known to you are enjoying the financial services offered in the village itself? (Please specify) 9. Do they share this information with you; and motivate you to avail the same? YES/NO 10. In your opinion, what are the problems you are facing which are preventing you from using the financial services at BC point? (Please specify) 11. What suggestions do you offer for making you use the present financial services offered? 12. Do you feel that these services are offered for citizens benefit or Banks benefit? (specify your opinion) 13. Are you willing to avail this facility if it is started in your villages? YES?NO 14. Are you able to put your signature or do you use thumb impression?

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Portability of Entitlements in Public Distribution through COREPDS in Chhattisgarh

A.K.Somasekhar 1 * and M.K.Mishra 2 ABSTRACT This case study is about a successful government process re-engineering effort in Public Distribution System (PDS) to create a sustainable and self improving system. The project is named as COREPDS. Traditionally a beneficiary is linked to one FPS to get her entitlements of food grain and kerosene at subsidized prices. That means the service level at Fair Price Shop (FPS) is entirely dependent on FPS will&wish and departments monitoring. In COREPDS, beneficiary is de-linked with FPS and has been given an option to go to any FPS of her liking. The technology put in place takes care of authentication of the beneficiary and record of withdrawals by the beneficiary. The portability empowered beneficiary with greater negotiating power with the FPS. The competition among FPSs for a bigger business share improved the quality of service at FPS. This paper discusses various risks associated with FPS automation and their mitigation strategies. Keywords: PDS, Portability, COREPDS, RSBY Smart Card, FPS Automation 1. Introduction Computerization of PDS Supply Chain Management was successfully implemented in Chhattisgarh in 2007- 08. The system has been fully operational in the State since January 2008 and stocking of PDS commodities in 10,800 Fair Price Shops (FPS) is being closely and effectively being monitored since then. The implementation of computerized system has lead to increased transparency, accountability and significant reduction in diversion of stocks. The surveys done by Right to Food and Planning Commission have both revealed that 95% people in Chhattisgarh are getting full rations as per their entitlements. The initiative did not include automation of FPS automation, leaving a scope to revolutionize PDS by empowering beneficiary with the right to choose the FPS. COREPDS (FPS automation in Chhattisgarh) proved to be a game changer in PDS operations. The convenience that technology has given to a bank account holder to withdraw money from any ATM, is being offered to a poor BPL beneficiary in COREPDS. COREPDS is operational in all 220 FPSs of Raipur & Durg cities, as on today benefiting 2.0 lakh Ration Card holders. 2. Motivators for the Initiative PDS in Chhattisgarh had been reformed with both ICT and NON IT interventions. Even though the PDS had improved in Chhattisgarh since 2008 due to ICT and NON IT interventions, there were still the following two major problems which motivated to take up the current initiative. 2.1 Beneficiary in general was getting her full entitlements, but facing the following one or more common problems at FPS. 2.1.1 FPS is not open when the beneficiary wants to take ration. 90% of beneficiaries take their ration in first week of the month. The remaining beneficiaries, who could not take in the first week,
1

Technical Director NIC Chhattisgarh State Centre, Ist Floor Mantralaya D.K.S.Bhawan Raipur, Inida *Corresponding Author: (Email: som@nic.in) 2 National Informatice Centre, India

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generally finds the FPS closed when they want to take. They have to make a few additional trips to take their ration. 2.1.2 FPS may declare no stock even he has sufficient stocks. Beneficiary has to accept it. 2.1.3 The sales person may not give the beneficiary due respect and sometimes misbehave. Overcharging a few rupees and under weighment by few grams are the most common complaints. 2.1.4 Beneficiary generally spends a half day to take her ration because of long queues. Beneficiary sometimes has to lose Rs. 150/-, the daily wage to get subsidies worth Rs. 700/-. The motivation behind the implementation of COREPDS is to solve the problems stated above. Given that these problems exist at the shop level and that their existence depends on the behavior and integrity of the shop sales person, technology alone can not provide a solution to the problems. The problems can only be solved by empowering the beneficiary to go to any FPS of her choice by providing portability support. Whenever a beneficiary faces any of the above problems, she would be free to go to any other FPS where she gets better service. Fear of losing customers and competition among FPSs shall also eliminate the above problems and improve the services. COREPDS not only provides for capturing of real time transaction data at the FPS but also offers portability to the beneficiaries to address the above problems. 2.2 There were clear evidences of Proxy issuances (recording an issue to a beneficiary without actually issuing to the beneficiary) before the implementation of COREPDS, mostly in case of APL allocations and Kerosene, as demand for these items is comparatively less. Another motivation behind the initiative is to save cost to the Government by checking Proxy issues with the help of Smart Card / OTP authentication. 3. Objectives 3.1 To improve Service Delivery Primary purpose of the initiative is to improve service delivery at FPS in terms of quality of the commodities, quantity of commodities and behavior of FPS sales person with beneficiaries. 3.2 To reduce Diversion To check diversion of PDS commodities by checking proxy issues. Diversion in PDS Supply chain at any stage (while procuring, storage, at the time of movement from warehouse to FPS or at FPS) is possible only when proxy issues can be recorded in the system. COREPDS is targeted towards elimination of diversion by using Online real time mechanical authentication, at the time of service delivery, at the FPS. 3.3 To empower beneficiary The objective of COREPDS is to empower the beneficiary with the facility to pick up her rations from the FPS of her choice. This in turn introduces competition, among the FPSs, for a larger share of beneficiaries, leading to improved service delivery at the shop. As a result, the beneficiary is not solely dependent on monitoring done by the departmental officials. In fact the beneficiary, in COREPDS, becomes a partner of the government in the process of monitoring. 3.4 To Weed out Bad FPS The past system of inspection of FPSs to identify bad FPSs for cancelling them has been proved to be ineffective as the inspections can attract corrupt practices and the inspectors can be managed with grafts. COREPDS is to create a system where bad performers shall automatically be weeded out as a result of competition. 3.5 To Create Transparency 255

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The transaction data recorded at the shops would be put in public domain and hence COREPDS enables public scrutiny and social auditing of the FPSs. 4. Strategy Adapted In COREPDS, FPSs are equipped with a POS device with GPRS connectivity. Hon'ble Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh has named the POS device used in COREPDS as Annapoorna-ATM, as it works like ATM for food grains (clarification: Food grains are given manually by FPS but authentication and record of transaction on server is done through this POS) Each BPL beneficiary is provided with a Smart Ration Card (SRC) and APL beneficiary has been registered with her mobile number. BPL beneficiary can take her rations (as per entitlement) at any FPS by producing her SRC. FPS sales person inserts the SRC in POS device. POS reads the ration card number and sends it to the server through GPRS to get her entitlement balances. FPS sales person enters the quantities to be issued to beneficiary and submits. Server updates the transaction and gives the success report. Thereafter a receipt is printed and the commodities are then issued to the beneficiary. For the next transaction, the beneficiary can choose to go to another FPS as her food account balances are maintained on the server. The same portability has been offered to an APL beneficiary with the help of One Time Pin (OTP) authentication through her mobile phone. COREPDS is designed for biometric authentication of the beneficiary using either the Aadhaar infrastructure or Rashtriya Swasthya Beema Yojana (RSBY) biometrics. COREPDS shall work with the smart card issued by the Food department as well as with the RSBY smart card issued by the Health department just by linking the RSBY- URN and the Ration Card number. This not only leads to savings in precious time and money for the Government but also relieves the beneficiary from the burden of carrying multiple cards. 5. Portability The problems that are faced by beneficiary at FPS were mainly due to linking of beneficiary with one FPS in the earlier system. FPS did not have fear of losing a beneficiary. COREPDS empowers beneficiary by offering a right to chose FPS of her liking. This system shall create a competition between FPS and thus improve service delivery. COREPDS enables good performers attract more and more customers and get more business where as bad performers lose their business. It is worth noted here COREPDS has created an internal mechanism where bad performers are automatically weeded out and good performers are incentivized. Now beneficiaries can go to FPS of their choice. Currently, about 25 % beneficiaries are taking commodities from an FPS other than their attached FPS. 75 % beneficiaries have not changed their FPS. But they are taking their commodities now with their choice not with compulsion. As per 1Dr. Amartya Sen in his book Development as Freedom, "A person produces the same commodities in the same way and ends up with same income and buys the same goods, she may still have very good reason to prefer the scenario of free choice over that of submission to order". Current PDS in the State is based on the manual authentication of beneficiary at FPS by seeing her ration card and photo on it. This type of authentication does not provide proof of authentication and is all dependent on the integrity of FPS. Mechanical authentication provides evidence that the delivery is taken place with the knowledge of beneficiary. Hence, proxy withdrawals can be checked with the help of mechanical authentication. 6. COREPDS Usecases COREPDS allows issue of PDS commodities through five different use cases described below. 6.1 Use Case 1: Issue PDS Commodities with SRC 256

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This is the default method of issuing PDS commodities in COREPDS. SRC is inserted in the POS device. POS authenticates SRC and sends ration card details to server to get Food A/C balances. When balances are displayed on the screen, quantities to be issued are entered and submitted to the server. Server updates the transaction and success report is sent. Receipt is printed and given to the beneficiary along with PDS commodities. The detailed flow chart is given below. 6.2 Use Case 2: Issue PDS Commodities without SRC There will always be a situation where a small percentage of genuine beneficiaries do not have SRCs because either they could not take in the distribution camps or they have lost and duplicate is not yet been received. This use case is to serve these genuine beneficiaries even with the risk of issue proxy issues. These beneficiaries shall not get the advantage of portability. But can take the commodities from their linked FPS. FPS shall enter the Ration card number and quantities to be issued and records the transaction in the server. The detailed flow chart is given below. 6.3 Use Case 3: Issue PDS Commodities with OTP Authentication APL Beneficiaries in COREPDS have not been given smart ration card, but registered with their mobile numbers. These beneficiaries also can go to any FPS with their registered mobile and claim their entitlements. FPS enters their ration card number and submits to the server. Server sends OTP to the registered mobile number and food a/c balances to the POS device. Beneficiaries shares OTP with FPS which will enter in POS device along with quantities to be issued. Server authenticates OTP and sends success report for further issue of PDS commodities to the beneficiary. The detailed flow chart is given below. 6.4 Use Case 4: Issue PDS Commodities with SRC in Offline mode It is a fact that the connectivity is good in India and increasing rapidly. But it is also fact connectivity at one place is not reliable. This use case is to continue the business in case of temporary connectivity problems at FPS. The transaction is completed offline and stored in the FPSs Smart card as well as Beneficiarys SRC. As soon as the connectivity is available the transaction shall be updated in the server. However this use case allows only a limited number of transactions. 6.5 Use Case 5: Issue PDS Commodities with RSBY Smart Card Government of Chhattisgarh has decided to universalize RSBY throughout the Chhattisgarh that means every family in the state shall get one RSBY smart card. Hence department has decided to use RSBY cards as smart ration cards. This will be the 1st successful experiment in the country that provides for synthesis between the efforts of the 2 departments of the government to provide services to common beneficiaries through the same instrument. RSBY cards can also be used for offline biometric authentication before issuing PDS commodities. The detailed flow chart is given below. The flow chart how beneficiaries are served at FPS with SRC is shown in the figure 1.0. The complete process flow in COREPDS is shown in figure 2.0

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Figure: 1.0 258

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7. Performance Indicators for COREPDS Effective monitoring of a project is possible only when we create indicators to measure impact of the project in the direction of envisioned objectives. The performance indicators should be preferably objective in nature. The following performance indicators are being used for monitoring COREPDS in Chhattisgarh. 7.1 Reduction in Fake Issues Change in percentage of utilization of commodities at FPS, when compared to that of the same month of previous year and the average of 3 months prior to COREPDS implementation shall be calculated which can be used to find out the actual savings due to implementation of COREPDS. (+ve indicator) You can see that the actual sale in BPL food grain is only 95% after implementation of COREPDS against 100% before, sale of APL grains is only 50% against 80% before and sale of kerosene is 75% against 100% prior to COREPDS. This translates into 5% saving in BPL food grains, 30% in APL food grains and 25% in kerosene to the government, either to the central government or to the state government. 7.2 Measurement of Portability The project envisions that the portability is the empowerment of beneficiary. It is required to measure how many people are using the empowerment and the no. of FPSs losing their business due to this portability. The following indexes will be calculated to find out the impact of Portability. 7.2.1 Churning Effect The % of beneficiaries taken commodities from other than attached FPSs in the total beneficiaries taken commodities in that month will be calculated. (+ve indicator) Churning effect is 25% currently. 7.2.2 Weeding Out Bad FPSs: % of FPSs that have served less than 75% of attached beneficiaries in total number of FPS in COREPDS shall be measured. When some FPSs lose their business due to this portability then only we can conclude that beneficiaries are getting better service and bad performers are being punished. (+ve indicator) 40% FPSs have lost at least 25% of business. 7.3 Measurement of improvement in service delivery For objective measurement of service delivery improvement the following indicators shall be used. 8.3.1 % of people getting all commodities at one time: It is an observation that beneficiaries have to visit multiple times to get different commodities in the present system of PDS. It is an obvious improvement in service delivery if beneficiary can get all the commodities (except Kerosene) at one time, saving in multiple trips and associated cost and time. Kerosene is neither sold nor preferred to be bought along with food grain commodities because of its smell. (+ve indicator) The average trips made by a beneficiary is now 1.8 7.4 Annual Customer Satisfaction Survey An Annual survey will be conducted to take feedback from at least 1% of beneficiaries in COREPDS and the customer satisfaction indicator will be calculated. 259

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8. Risk Analysis and Mitigation Strategies The successful implementation and sustainability of any eGovernance project mainly depends on the strength and suitability of mitigation strategies adapted by the department against various risks and challenges expected. COREPDS is vulnerable to 6 risks and 2 challenges, whose details are given below. 8.1 Risk 1: Implementation of CORE PDS acts against the interest of many FPS Agencies. It is not wise to assume that FPS will sincerely try to implement COREPDS. Some FPS may try to see technology fails and genuine beneficiaries do not get their ration and technology is blamed for that. Mitigation Strategy: Portability is the mitigation strategy. When one FPS says that the POS is not working, beneficiary can go to a nearby FPS. FPS that cannot run COREPDS loses its business to other FPSs. 8.2 Risk 2: In the initial days, all FPSs in an area can form a nexus and see that POSs do not work. Mitigation Strategy: CGSCSC operates mobile FPS carrying PDS Commodities and POS devices. Whenever a report is received that many FPSs are not working in one area, these Mobile FPS will be sent to that area. They serve the beneficiaries in front of the FPSs. Thus, FPSs who do run CORE PDS shall lose their business. 8.3 Risk 3: Competition does not help if everyone is bad. FPSs may intentionally do not improve their service to prove that COREPDS is a failure and could not meet objective of improvement in service delivery Mitigation Strategy: Guaranteed good performers are being introduced with the help of NGOs, CSR etc to set a bench mark for service level and thus ensure the FPS should meet that benchmark to remain in business. 8.4 Risk 4: Distribution of smart cards could not be completed. A few people have lost the Smart cards and it takes a few days to re-issue a duplicate card. As a result, a few genuine beneficiaries do not have smart cards. Mitigation Strategy: Allow issue with FPS card when Beneficiary Smart card is not available from the attached FPS. 8.5 Risk 5: Unreliable connectivity. Online transactions are not possible for a few hours. Mitigation Strategy: COREPDS by design is an online system. But it allows a limited offline issues also in case of connectivity failure. 8.6 Risk 6: Too much dependency on SI. Mitigation Strategy: 8.6.1 NIC has all web services required 8.6.2 NIC has sufficient skill set for maintenance of POS software 8.7 Challenge 1: 8.7.1 Maintenance of POS devices. 8.7.2 Continuation of business in case of POS failure. 260

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Strategy to meet the challenge: Sufficient buffer stock of POS devices for immediate replacement in case POS failure. 8.8 Challenge 2: 8.8.1 To train 151 FPS sales men 8.8.2 To create necessary will to change 8.8.3 To create necessary change 8.8.4 To create necessary awareness among beneficiaries Strategy to meet the challenge: 8.8.5 Video training material with HCMs message, Honble Ministers message and instructions to operate POS device 8.8.6 Public awareness through pamphlets and electronic media 9. Thoughts Considered in the design of COREPDS 9.1 FPS automation without portability of FPS, is not sustainable The main objective of any kind of FPS automation is to check diversion of stocks at the FPS. That naturally acts against the interest of such FPS agencies which earn undue profits as a result of diversion. Hence, it is not wise to assume that FPS will sincerely try to implement the technology. There would always be a risk that the FPS intentionally tries to discredit the technology (POS devices, connectivity etc.) by deliberately not following the protocols specified. In such a case, if portability is not offered, an impression would be created that the beneficiaries do not get service because of technology. No technological solution can be implemented sustainably if it creates or is seen to be creating more inconvenience to the genuine beneficiaries. To mitigate this risk, FPS automation should offer portability. If technology is not working at one FPS due to any reason, beneficiary can go to a near by FPS where it is working. The FPS, where the system does not work, shall loose business making the FPS sincerely try to run the system properly. 9.2 FPS automation without portability of FPS, creates more inconvenience to the genuine beneficiary In the cases of FPS automation without offering portability, it creates more inconvenience to 90 % genuine beneficiaries to check 10% diversion. Percentages may vary from State to State. The beneficiary (who has been getting her ration earlier also) does not find any difference except more inconvenience as she has been getting same entitlements at the same FPS earlier also. Without FPS automation, a beneficiary goes back empty handed only in two cases. One is 'FPS is closed' or second is 'stocks are not available'. But, when FPS automation is done without offering portability, it adds three more cases that the beneficiary does not get her entitlements. FPS is open, stocks are available but 'POS is dysfunctional' or 'no electricity for long hours and hence POS could not be charged' or 'the person who operates POS is not available'. 9.3 Biometric authentication may not be necessary in PDS Is biometric authentication really required in PDS, to transfer a few hundred rupees subsidy per month to a poor family? Looking at the large scale diversion taking place in PDS, some mechanical authentication is indeed required to check proxy issues. That can well be done quickly with some kind of 'What you have authentication' (Smart Cards/ Magnetic Cards). Yes, in some cases like cards are forcibly kept with FPS/ Sarpanch or in case of lost/stolen cards biometric authentication only check proxy issues. But, to check that small percentage of diversion, do we need to trouble majority of genuine beneficiaries? With the same amount of risk of fraud, we are using credit cards for transacting thousands of rupees. Banks used to operate 261

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teller counters to honor less than Rs 10,000 withdrawals even without comparing the signature, for offering quick service to the genuine customer even at the risk of a small fraction of fraudulent cases. That is because of the reason that banks value customer's convenience more than the associated risk. Unfortunately, we in Government do not consider the PDS beneficiaries as customers of our service. We try to control them rather than empower them. Aadhaar seeding in the beneficiary database itself shall remove all fake/duplicate ration cards. The rest of the cases of steeling the cards, mortgage of cards can be addressed in other ways. 10. Business Continuity Plan (BCP) One design constraint of COREPDS is 'Genuine beneficiary should never be denied her entitlements due to technical or operational issues'. Keeping the above constraint in mind BCP has been formulated to continue issuing PDS commodities to genuine beneficiaries even at the cost of possibility of a few proxy issues.
1. Smart Ration Cards distribution is not complete due to operational issues. Some genuine beneficiaries do not have SRC with them. Some genuine beneficiaries have lost their SRC and have not yet received duplicate due to some operational delays. They can take their ration from the attached FPS without a SRC using FPS card only. They do not get benefit of portability. They can take their ration from the attached FPS without a SRC using FPS card only, till they get a duplicate. They do not get benefit of portability Beneficiaries can go to a nearby FPS and take their ration Mobile FPS' operated by CGSCSC shall go to that area and serve the beneficiaries Beneficiaries can take their ration using offline issue mode of COREPDS Business continues with the mirror server It has been decided to allow issue ration to the beneficiary with biometric authorization of another genuine beneficiary known to FPS

2.

3. 4.

Annapoorna-ATM is not working at one FPS FPS' in one area are not operating AnnapoornaATM due to some reasons Connectivity is not available temporarily or Server is down for some time Server Crash Bio-metric authentication of a genuine beneficiary failed due to some technical or other problems. (COREPDS shall implement biometric authentication using Aadhaar infrastructure or RSBY biometrics) Total failure of technology in an area for a few days

5. 6. 7.

8.

Director, department of Food, is authorised to permit manual operations on the recommendation of district collector and the manual transactions are captured in the system through Food Inspector's module.

11. Conclusion FPS automation is being tried in different States with the only objective of controlling diversion by checking proxy issues with the help of bio-metric authentication. But, main objective of COREPDS is to empower beneficiary by giving her right to go to any FPS and thereby creating competition between FPSs for larger business share. Within 6 months of introduction of COREPDS, 40 FPS have lost a great share of their business and 18 out of them have tendered their resignation. It can be concluded, with this case study, that portability of entitlements can improve the delivery of any social sector scheme especially PDS, significantly.

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12. Acknowledgements Authors are thankful for the guidance and encouragement given by Dr. Y.K.Sharma, D.G, NIC in the conceptualization and the execution of the project. Authors also express their thanks to Shri Vivek Dhand, ACS, government of Chhattisgarh and Shri Vikas Sheel, Secretary (Food), Government of Chhattisgarh for their continuous support in the execution of the project. References 1. Book: Dr. Amartya Sen, Freedom as Development

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e-Governance Service Discovery Framework

Zia Saquib 1 and Swapnil Shrivastava1* ABSTRACT Government of India initiated National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) with a vision to make government services accessible to citizens in their vicinity. The acceptance of these efforts will increase transparency in service delivery, reduce corruption and result in uniform progress in urban as well as rural India. However the overall adoption of eservices by citizen is low. Hence there is a strong need to spread awareness amongst the citizens to catalyze usage of e-services. e-Governance Service Discovery Framework aims to provide a single interface for the citizens to draw exhaustive information on eservices offered by various Central, State and Local Government departments. The proposed framework supports the discovery of related e-services or service bundles. A prototype shall be designed and implemented based on the proposed framework. This prototype shall be demonstrated for specific e-service use cases. The conceptual model of the proposed framework along with application and identified challenges is discussed in this paper.

Keywords: e-Governance Service Discovery Framework, Conceptual Framework, Citizen Empowerment, Search Engine.

1. Introduction The vision statement of National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) initiated by Government of India (GoI) is to make all government services accessible to common man in his locality through common service delivery outlets and ensure efficiency, transparency and reliability of such services at affordable costs to realize the basic needs of the common man. As mentioned in (Deity 2011; (Mathur Gupta & Sridevi 2009); Chauhan 2009), this plan is an attempt by the government to get closer to the citizens and provide them with access to different government services in their vicinity. However the available literature on eGovernance scenario in India (Ahuja 2008; Mistry 2010; NCEG 2012a; ARC Report 2008) suggests that there is a lack of knowledge amongst citizens about rights and benefits presented to them by the government. This has resulted in low adoption of e-services by citizen. As a result the full potential of these initiatives made by government is left unattained. Hence there is a strong need to spread awareness about available e-services amongst the citizens. e-Governance Service Discovery Framework aims to provide single stop for the citizens to draw exhaustive information on e-services offered by various Central, State and Local Government departments. The proposed framework will maintain information of the available e-services and support the discovery of related e-services or service bundles. Service bundles are set of services which serve a specific requirement of citizen and are possible candidate answers for their keyword search criteria. For example, Study Abroad keyword search option shall fetch relevant information on government procedures to be fulfilled by the citizen in order to go abroad for higher studies. The proposed framework comprises of five modules viz.: Related Service Model, eService Repository, Search Engine Module, Keyword Search Interface and Rule Engine Module. The eService Repository captures and maintains the information about existing e-services The Related Service Model built over this e-Service Repository captures service bundles. Service bundles enables well
1

Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) *Corresponding Author: (Email: swapnil@cdac.in)

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Zia Saquib et al./ e-Governance Service Discovery Framework organized and complete keyword search for e-services. The related e-services or service bundles are specified in the form of rules by Rule Engine Module. The keyword search technique supported in the proposed framework is planned to be as simple as web search engine like Google. The citizen shall specify keyword search option at the Keyword Search Interface to gather information on related services or service bundles matching their search criteria. The framework is proposed to meet the following objectives so as to facilitate mainstream awareness of eservices and their planned benefits amongst the citizens: - Information about available e-services, their intended benefits and discovery of citizens requirement specific set of e-services will assist the citizen to identify and avail the ones which cater to their needs. Online search for related e-services which is currently unavailable shall facilitate required information to the citizen on fingertip. - Methods such as awareness program and web search engine help the citizen to find information about e-services offered by government departments. However these methods either provide focused information or in a piecemeal manner. The single window of information shall support exhaustive information about existing e-services. - Comprehensive online search shall facilitate spread of awareness about e-services and thus motivate the citizens to use them. This automatically creates the mindshare needed to gather momentum towards mainstream adoption of e-services. - The spread of awareness will catalyze usage of these e-services amongst the citizens. This in turn increases transparency reduces corruption and result in uniform progress in urban as well as rural India. The rest of the paper is structured as follows. The background and motivation behind the e-Governance Service Discovery Framework is discussed in section 2. The conceptual model of the proposed framework along with a supporting use case is described in section 3. The identified challenges and application of the proposed framework are listed in section 4 and section 5 respectively.

2. Need for Proposed Framework Government at central, state and local level offers several services and benefit schemes which are rights of the citizens. As stated in (NCEG 2012a) in the past, due to the lack of awareness and corrupt intermediary delivery system the citizen especially in rural India stayed deprived from exercising their rights. In the early half of last decade, government adopted Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for online delivery of services via projects like Bhoomi and eSeva in certain regions of India. These efforts were isolated. Some of them did very well. As mentioned in (MAPIT) these attempts to bridge the digital divide between ICT and government services resulted in transparent service delivery, reduced corruption and catalyzed development in the region. As a result, GoI initiated NeGP in 2006 as an attempt to nationwide adoption of e-service. We referred to work by (Deity 2011; (Mathur Gupta & Sridevi 2009); Chauhan 2009) and learnt that NeGP comprises of 27 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) to be implemented at the Central, State and Local Government levels and 8 Common Core and Support Infrastructure. State Wide Area Network (SWAN), Citizen Service Centre (CSC), State Data Centre (SDC) and Gateway Constellation are some of the Common Core and Support Infrastructure under this plan. Thousands of service access points (CSCs) have been rolled out/are being rolled out to ensure that the e-services of various Central, State and Local Government departments are available to citizen in their neighborhood. This infrastructure facilitates service delivery to citizens in a seamless manner. MCA21, Passport Seva, Income Tax, Customs, e-Biz are some examples of central MMPs whereas Road Transport, Employment Exchange, Police Departmental Services are examples of state MMPs. Other critical services and benefit schemes including those related 265

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to health, education, rural development and social welfare are also being rolled out. As mentioned in (NCEG 2012b; EDSB 2011) in the year 2011, GoI introduced Electronic Delivery of Service bill to accelerate migration of manual service delivery mechanism to electronic medium. The bill recommends enactment of Electronic Delivery of Services (EDS) Act which mandates every government organization to deliver public services in electronic mode from a cut off date. This would require each Ministry or Department to identify the bunch of citizen centric services to be delivered through electronic means along with the delivery channels, with stipulated timelines and service levels for each service. As a consequence of EDS bills directives for government departments to migrate towards e-Governance and with support infrastructure getting created, a very large number of government services are likely to be available as e-services in near future. With this transition already in place, catalyzing rapid adoption of eservices by the citizens will play a critical role in realization of its benefits. Increase in adoption of eservices will enable the intended benefits of government services and schemes to reach the common man. Hence we strongly believe that there is a need to spread awareness for e-services amongst the citizens to boost its adoption. Available literature in e-Governance domain also substantiates this need identified by us. The white paper by (Mistry 2010) is about existing status of e-Governance in India and various challenges identified during its implementation. The lack of awareness regarding benefits of e-Governance is listed as key challenge in the paper. The paper recommends creation of awareness as a measure for successful implementation of e-Governance in India. The field study by (Ahuja 2008) reports status of Indian citizen's readiness and awareness towards various e-Governance initiatives. This study was conducted over a sample of citizens to find the awareness level and usage of computer and internet for various government services. Lack of awareness was reported as major hurdle by majority of the citizens in this survey. The report suggests government agencies to make people aware of e-services, their usage and advantages. In India as stated in (ARC Report 2008) e-Governance needs to be implemented across different departments. It is observed that these departments are with a wide spectrum of activities and with varying levels of readiness for e-Governance. The successful implementation of e-Governance initiatives would not only require fulfillment of technical requirement but also capacity building and creation of awareness within government and outside. (D'Cruz et.al. 2006) in their work on eGovernment concepts have stated that awareness about a concept originates from its understanding and that the awareness and adoption can be significantly increased by communication among the stakeholders who frequently use the term. Word of mouth, print media, awareness program and web search engine are some of the methods by which citizen can find information about e-services provided by various government departments. (NPI Home Page; Deity 2011) were accessed by us to find details about India Portal. India Portal is a central MMP spearheaded by Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY). The portal provides citizens with classification of information and services for e-governance initiatives offered by various government departments. It is the central repository of documents, forms, services, acts, announcements, contact directories, schemes and rules. However these methods either provide focused information or in piecemeal manner. Some of the existing methods provide classification of information about e-service. There is a need for comprehensive search of information on e-services offered by various Central, State and Local Government departments. In absence of much needed single window of information about e-services for citizens, e-Governance Service Discovery Framework is proposed. The proposed framework aims to provide single stop of information to the citizen based on the search option specified by them. This requires collection of details about available e-service from suitable data sources. (NSD Home Page; NSDG Home Page) were accessed to search for details on National Service Directory and National eGovernance Service Delivery Gateway. National Service Directory (NSD) acts as a service resolution point for all the e-services registered in the Gateway Constellation. It was implemented as part of National eGovernance Service Delivery Gateway (NSDG) project. NSDG is a messaging middleware which enables interoperability and integration of various central government department services. The 266

Zia Saquib et al./ e-Governance Service Discovery Framework SSDGs are the productized version of NSDG and act as gateway for services offered by various state government departments. In addition to these, there are departmental applications gateways like MCA21, Passport which are identified as Domain Gateways. All these put together Constellation of Gateway. National eService Directory (NeSD) is proposed by DEITY as evolution of NSD. NeSD is nation wide eservice repository which will hold information about existing e-services irrespective of the service delivery channel. NeSD shall store technical details as well as procedural information about available eservices. NSD and in future NeSD are potential input data source for the proposed framework to fetch information about available e-services. The proposed online search framework for e-services will motivate the citizens to avail them. This can automatically lead to the mindshare needed to gather momentum towards mainstream adoption of e-services.

3. e-Governance Service Discovery Framework e-Governance Service Discovery Framework provides citizen with an interface for comprehensive, interactive and efficient search of information about available e-services. The proposed framework maintains information of the available e-services and supports the discovery of related e-services or service bundles. Service bundles are set of services which serve a specific requirement of citizen and are possible candidate answers for their keyword search criteria. For example, e- Passport Seva and Immigration service which are offered by Ministry of External Affair and Ministry of Home Affair respectively are two of the 27 MMPs under NeGP. A citizen who wishes to study abroad shall apply for Passport Seva as well as Immigration Service. Both of these services are thus related to activity Study Abroad of the citizen. In the proposed framework both the services together will form a service bundle. This service bundle will be a candidate answer for keyword search option such as Study Abroad. A citizen by typing Study Abroad as search keywords should be able to access the information of most relevant service bundles.

The e-Governance Service Discovery Framework for discovery of related services or service bundles is as shown in figure 1. The proposed framework comprises of five modules viz.: - e-Service Repository, - Related Service Model, - Search Engine Module, - Keyword Search Interface and - Rule Engine Module. The short functional description for each of these modules is as follows:

e-Service Repository The information about existing e-services for various government departments will be fetched and maintained in this module. National Services Directory (NSD) an existing service repository and component of Gateway Constellation can be a potential data source to fetch relevant information into this module. In future, the National eService Directory (NeSD), the proposed evolution of NSD can also be used for this purpose. A generic schema will be defined for this module to support exhaustive keyword search. The module will capture service details such as service name, service description, service provider, how to apply, benefits and so on. Technical details such as service access channel and security mechanism will also be captured in this module. All the information required in the schema defined for the repository may not be available in NSD or NeSD. Based on the data requirement, an interface will be made available to Service Providers in order to fetch additional information about e-services into the repository. 267

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Related Service Model This module stores the service bundles or related e-services. Extracting and storing such information requires the data to be represented in a form that not only captures entities and their attributes but also relations among the entities. A graph structure can easily represent the required data by capturing entities and their attributes as set of vertices and relations between entities as set of edges. Hence service bundles or related e-services will be captured in graph representation of data. The possible keywords for each service bundle will also be stored in this model. The e-service details and keywords will be represented as nodes and relation amongst them will be represented as edges. Related Service Model built over e-Service Repository as part of this framework will assist the citizen to identify and avail the service(s) which cater to the requirement specified by them. This model also facilitates narrowing down of candidate answers in Search Engine Module and display of most relevant options.

Search Engine Module This module will fetch most relevant service bundles and information about e-services based on the citizens search criteria. Citizens search criteria in the form of keywords will be the input to this module. The module will generate complete set of candidate answers for these keywords. To generate these candidate answers corresponding service bundles will be fetched from Related Service Model. The Related Service Model stores the structural information of service bundles. The details of e-services are available in e-Service Repository. The module will rank the candidate answers. The search result is comprised of candidate answers with ranking beyond a given cutoff. The module will send structural information of these answers along with service details fetched from e-service Repository as search result to Keyword Search Interface.

Keyword Search Interface This module provides interface to the user to enter keyword search options and view the search result in an interactive manner. The interface to accept keyword search options from citizen will be as similar as web search engine like Google. The interface provides the citizen with different levels to view the search result. The search result comprises of service bundles. Based on the citizens search criteria the information in service bundles is classified as primary, secondary and supplementary. This interface considers primary information as core and displays it in detailed manner. The secondary information will be displayed in summarized manner. The appropriate links will be provided to view the details. The links will also be provided for supplementary information. The different levels of information supported by this module prevent the information bombardment to the end user. The user can view the information of their choice in an interactive manner.

Rule Engine Module The service bundles will be defined in this module. The help of domain expert will be sought for creation of service bundles. The domain experts are the ones who have in-depth knowledge about services offered by various government departments. They have understanding about how the output of a particular service can be of significance to other services. In other words they have understanding about services and relationship between them. The domain expert can view the details of e-service in this module. The relation between related services will be specified by them in the form of rules. The service bundles created as a result of this process will be stored in Related Service Model module.

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Zia Saquib et al./ e-Governance Service Discovery Framework

We will now take the use case of Aadhaar enabled Services to do a walkthrough of the proposed framework. (AAF2.0 ; AuthAPI1.6 2012) defines Aadhaar Authentication Service as an online process in which citizens Aadhaar number along with his/her identifiers are submitted to CIDR for verification. These identifiers could be a combination of biometrics (fingerprints, iris) and/or demographic information (such as Name, Date of birth, Address) and/or a secret PIN/OTP number known only to the citizen. During verification, the submitted details are matched with the data against the citizens Aadhaar number in CIDR. If they match then CIDR sends Yes as response or else No. Aadhaar-enabled Services are the services which will be delivered to the citizen after successful Aadhaar Authentication. NSDG as discussed earlier is a messaging middleware provides Integrated Service Delivery based on Service Oriented Architecture for various government services. The paper by (Shrivastava et. al. 2012) describes integration of Aadhaar Authentication service with NSDG. Integration of NSDG with Aadhaar Authentication Ecosystem shall cater Aadhaar Authentication Service to all the government departments who wish to offer Aadhaar-enabled Services and benefit schemes to the citizens. A Proof of Concept (PoC) is implemented based on this Aadhaar-NSDG integration model. In this PoC, Jammu & Kashmir 269

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state portals Indira Gandhi Old Age Pension Scheme (IGNOAPS) service is made Aadhaar-enabled. Other benefit schemes and services can also be Aadhaar enabled in similar manner. e-Pramaan, a national eAuthentication service is based on National eAuthentication Framework formulated by NeGD, DEITY and available at (NeAF). ePramaan will be provided as a backend authentication service. Various central/state government department services registered with various service delivery gateways can call ePramaan service for authentication before the actual service is invoked. Aadhaar Authentication Service gets invoked for certain security levels of e-Pramaan.

For the walkthrough of the proposed framework we will take benefit scheme as keyword search criteria specified by the citizen. The framework will generate the candidate answers and rank them for this search criterion. Various benefit schemes and their related services will form the candidate answers. Service bundle comprising of IGNOAPS, Aadhaar Authentication Service and ePramaan will form one such candidate answer. The framework will display this service bundle in webpage layout as shown in figure 2. This layout shall be evolved further for effective browsing and display of information contained in form of service bundles. IGNOAPS service details will form the primary information. The details of this service such as service provider, benefits of the service, how to apply etc: will be displayed in the main window. ePramaan and Aadhaar form the secondary information and are shown as links. The citizen can click on these links to access details of the related services. The supplementary information such as nearest service access point shall also be made available. The proposed framework will help the citizen to know the available services, their benefits and details required for applying for these services without visiting government department. The discovery of requirement specific set of e-services will assist the citizen to identify and avail the ones which cater to their needs. The localization support in the framework enables the citizen to fetch information in their local language. A prototype will be designed and developed based on the proposed framework and will be demonstrated for specific e-service use cases.

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Zia Saquib et al./ e-Governance Service Discovery Framework 4. Challenges - e-Service Repository captures details about existing e-services. These details vary across eservices depending on their purpose, supported delivery channel, process flow, security mechanism and so on. The repository should support generic data model in order to capture details of disparate e-services. - The keyword search techniques should efficiently evaluate complete set of service bundles relevant for the citizens search criteria. It should facilitate narrowing down of candidate answers so that only most relevant options are displayed. - The search result should be displayed in an effective manner. The framework should support classification of information at primary, secondary and supplementary level in the search result. The citizen should be able to explore this information in an interactive manner. 5. Application of Proposed Framework - The framework provides citizen with an interface for comprehensive, interactive and efficient search of information about available e-services. This leads to spread of awareness for e-services and motivate citizens to avail them. This can automatically lead to mindshare needed to gather momentum towards mainstream adoption of e-services. - Service bundles or related e-services are captured in Related Service Model. In future e-Service Repository along with captured service bundles can become possible input for complete backend automation of e-Governance services. - India portal supports various classifications of individual e-services. The keyword search interface of the proposed framework can be plugged in the portal. The citizen can use this interface to search service bundles matching their search criteria. - Indian population especially in rural India is conversant with local language. Localization support in proposed framework will provide information to citizen in familiar languages. This will enable the information to percolate down to the grass root level. References 1. Ahuja A 2008, Indian Society: Is it Ready for Online Government Services?, egov magazine. 2. ARC Report 2008, Implementing e-Governance Reforms, Chapter 6, 11th Report PROMOTING e-GOVERNANCE : The SMART Way Forward. 3. Chauhan R 2009, National E-Governance Plan in India, UNU-IIST Report No. 414. 4. Deity 2011, Saaransh- A compendium of Mission Mode Projects under NeGP, Department of Information Technology, Government of India. 5. D'Cruz J Rambajun N Sood S, Agarwal R and Saquib Z 2006, The eGovernment Concept: A Systematic Review of Research & Practitioner Literature, IEEE- Innovations in Information Technology, Dubai. 6. Mathur D Gupta P and Sridevi A 2009, e-Governance approach in India - The National eGovernance Plan ( NeGP ), Governance An International Journal Of Policy And Administration. 7. Mistry H 2010, e-Governance: Efficiency and Challenges in India, Skoch Knowledge Repository - Digital Inclusion. 8. NCEG 2012a, Towards Effective Electronic Service Delivery, Background Papers, 15th National Conference on e-Governance, India. 9. NCEG 2012b, Democratisation of Information, Background Papers, 15th National Conference on e-Governance, India. 10. Shrivastava S Saquib Z Gopinath P and Chomal P 2012, Unique Identity Enabled Service Delivery through NSDG, EGOVIS and EDEM co-located with DEXA, Vienna (Austria), LNCS 7452, pp. 103111. 11. AAF2.0, Aadhaar Authentication Framework 2.0, Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI), http://www.uidai.gov.in/auth.html (accessed on: 10th Oct 2011) 271

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12. AuthAPI1.6 2012, Aadhaar Authentication API 1.6, http://uidai.gov.in/ images/ FrontPageUpdates/ aadhaar_authentication_api_1_6.pdf (accessed on: 10th Oct 2011) 13. EDSB 2011, Draft Electronic Delivery of Services Bill, http://deity.gov.in/content/draftelectronic-delivery-services-bill-2011 (accessed on: 31st Oct 2012) 14. MAPIT, e-Governance Initiatives India http://www.mapit.gov.in/compendium.pdf (accessed on: 23rd Feb 2012) 15. NeAF, e-Pramaan - A National e-Authentication Framework, http://deity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/ dit/files/DraftNeAF1911.pdf (accessed on: 17th Oct 2011) 16. NPI Home Page, National Portal of India http://www.india.gov.in/ (accessed on: 15th Oct 2011) 17. NSDG Home Page, National e-Governance Service Delivery http://www.nsdg.gov.in (accessed on: 15th Oct 2011) 18. NSD Home Page, National Service Directory http://deity.gov.in/content/national-servicesdirectory-nsd (accessed on: 15th Oct 2011)

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Swara: Broadcasting Tribal Voice on Mobile

Pradeep Nair 1 * ABSTRACT Community broadcasting experiments are changing the face of development communication in developing world and the life of people who do not have access to main-stream media. Community broadcasting is a vibrant communication mechanism to enhance pluralism and diversity. It is a truly peoples broadcasting that perceives listeners not only as receivers and consumers, but also as active citizens and creative producers of media content. This form of community broadcasting is fully consistent with the letter and spirit of the Milan Declaration on Communication and Human Rights (1998) which has asserted that community media should have a responsibility to help sustain the diversity of the worlds cultures and languages and that they should be supported through legislative, administrative and financial measures. The research manuscript looks community broadcasting as a whole new world providing communication development support to the tribal peoples residing in far flung areas of India. The study makes an in depth analysis of the community broadcasting experiments taking place on mobile communication platforms in tribal areas with an exclusive case study of Swara a mobile community broadcasting experiment. In this study the effort is also made to find out the best possible practices to bring mobile community broadcasting as a community participatory tool in tribal areas to ensure the participation of tribal people in designing, producing as well as subsequent airing of radio programs mostly based on local community issues, problems, needs and interests on multiple delivery platforms.

Keywords: Community Broadcasting, Mobile Radio, Tribal Voices, Alternative Media Platforms, Policy Interventions, Social Empowerment 1. Introduction SWARA the Mobile Community Radio is one of those initiatives where the worldwide sanctity debate between the published word' and the spoken word' comes to rest. Here, the medium of voice has made a difference of a kind that the published word could never do. The tribal people living in the central Indian forests are mostly illiterate and have no access to television; radio is their only medium for communication. So some initiatives were made to create a community radio station by different development agencies and non-government organizations to air news coming from the various tribal villages in the State of Chhattisgarh but nothing concrete happened because of the administrative, technical and financial hurdles. Finally in 2010, a former Journalist of BBC Shubhranshu Choudhary along with a small team of broadcasters initiated the idea of CGNet Swara as an alternative media platform where the tribal people
1

Central University of Himachal Pradesh Dharamshala, Kangra, India *Corresponding Author: (Email: nairdevcom@yahoo.co.in)

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could talk about issues plaguing them in their own language so that their side of the picture should be known to all. 2. The Conceptual Framework India still does not permit news to be aired on radio by private broadcasters. The only news bulletins that are aired on radio are from state-run channels (TRAI: 2004). The private community radios in the country that have been permitted by the government have a very short range and cater to a very small number of people (Sen, 2004: 18-22). The idea of Swara was something different. It was actually a mobile radio platform, a platform where citizens from all over the State could call on one phone number, which was also the Internet server number, to give news that went unreported. A small team of technicians then verify the news item, translate it into Hindi and other regional languages depending upon its news value, and beam it on its mobile bulletins. These bulletins could then be heard by anyone who called the Swara phone number. Mobile radio was a new concept and the government had no legal boundaries for it. Swara which was initially started as a small experiment has become a huge success in terms of its impact. Many stories of police repression, delay in MGNREGS payments, human rights violations, caste abuses, and exploitation of tribals by the administration, which came to Swara's notice, were picked up by mainstream newspapers. At present, Swara gets approximately 300 calls a day. Apart from Chhattisgarh, it has spread its influence to Orissa, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh. Technically the stories on Swara are beamed in three different ways. First, the stories are published on the website of Swara. In second phase, the stories are converted into mobile bulletins in different languages. To listen to a bulletin in a local dialect, one needs only to press a button. In the third phase, the stories are beamed in short wave radio format. Reaching people is more difficult than it sounds. The team of Swara conducted a number of sensitization workshops to sensitize and mobilize people to report various happenings of their area. The aim is to bring the indigenous people into the Swara fold so that they report in their own language. The success of Swara indicates that mobile community radio has great untapped potential. As far as the management of Swara is concerned, a group of broadcast technicians manage the main server in Bangalore and a team of translators translate the local news into Hindi and other languages. But however convenient it may sound, achieving perfection is a challenging task. Though mobile networks have penetrated the region, not many can afford the mobile device. So the mobile radio network is banking on a few individuals who have mobile phones and on public telephone booths. Moreover, training the core team in computers and in editing has been a challenging task (Buckley, 2000: 180-187). It is for this reason that the Swara team, with the help of many volunteers, has been conducting media workshops where citizen journalists are trained in recording voice, reporting and editing. For tribal people, learning to mail electronically is not just novel but also revolutionary. Sending e-mails is a part of the expansion of the Swara network; citizen journalists are taught to attach voice files. In these media workshops, the Swara team plan to decentralize the bureaus and empower some citizens with technical skills so that they can train other villagers. But this practice is happening only in those places where there is Internet connectivity. The tribal people are also being trained to use mobile phones to their maximum potential Such openness can also lead to misuse as much as it could lead to repression from those who benefitted from the silence of the tribal community. It is for this reason that the Swara team maintains a long-drawnout verification process. Once the news comes from one village, it is verified through many sources, already in the loop of Swara, in the region. If the news is sensitive, the team sits on it until it gets the 274

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same news from different journalists. If more than three people report about the same incident, the news is likely to be true; only then the Swara team publish it. 3. The Strategic Framework (Applications) Enhancing agricultural production by increasing the efficiency, productivity and sustainability of small scale farms is an area where Mobile Broadcasting can make a significant contribution. Farming involves risks and uncertainties, with farmers facing many threats from poor soils, drought, erosion and pests. Key improvements stem from information about pest and disease control, especially early warning systems, new varieties, new ways to optimize production and regulations for quality control (Fraser, 2002: 69-73). 3.1 Access to Market/Price Information Awareness of up-to-date market information on prices for commodities, inputs and consumer trends can improve tribal agricultural practitioner livelihoods substantially and have a dramatic impact on their negotiating position. Such information is instrumental in making decisions about future crops and commodities and about the best time and place to sell and buy goods (Mathur, 1959: 65-71). Typically, price information is collected at the main regional markets and stored in a central database. The information is published on Swara website, accessible to farmers via information centers and this information is also beamed on the mobile radio to reach a wider audience. Swara also focuses on short message and text services to effectively deliver prices and trading information via mobile phone to farmers of the tribal areas. 3.2 Capacity-building and Empowerment Tribal communities and farmer organizations can be helped through the use of mobile broadcasting to strengthen their own capacities and better represent their constituencies when negotiating input and output prices, land claims, resource rights and infrastructure projects. Mobile broadcasting services like Swara enables tribal communities to interact with other stakeholders, thus reducing social isolation. It widens the perspective of local tribal communities in terms of national or global developments, opens up new business opportunities and allows easier contact with friends and relatives. Mobile community broadcasting can play a very important role in making the communication processes more efficient, transparent and participatory in nature. It will also help in making laws and land titles more accessible. Advances in ICT along with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) linked to Geographical Information Systems (GIS), digital cameras and internet, help tribal communities to document and communicate their situation quickly and effectively to the rest of the world. Tribal communities benefit from better access to credit and rural banking facilities. The mobile banking initiatives offer further scope to reduce costs and stimulate local trade for the tribal community. Presently the problem is that the timely information on technologies is predominantly only available in hardcopy form or in stand-alone databases. Data are often incomplete or not compatible with other sources. Local knowledge on good practices and lessons learned about innovations is generally not captured by the main stream media platforms (Thompson, 1995: 89-97). Economies of scale can be realized through the use of shared platforms using common standards. Information should be presented in an appropriate format in order to be effectively used by tribal communities. Audio messages in local languages have proved to be effective (Dagron, 2001: 63-72). Community broadcasting services on mobile platform like Swara is a classic example to provide input for local innovation. Now days, tribal community needs tailor-made, quality answers to their questions about various government initiatives for their welfare. Mobile Q&A services are being piloted in India. Initiatives like Swara and others are working on some mechanisms to ensure learning and information sharing. 275

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Community broadcasting over mobile is playing an important role in knowledge sharing, bringing various stakeholders together, and engaging in policy dialogue at tribal areas (Pavarala, 2004: 6-22).

3.3 Tribal access and exchange mechanisms: connectivity and participation The type of communication concept used by local tribal communities is subject to rapid change. However, broadband internet access is seen as central for societal innovation because storing of large datasets and live communication requires good connectivity. Until recently, connectivity in tribal areas was limited to slow dial-up lines. Satellite connections now make broadband access possible in remote areas. Use of mobile phones has seen an enormous increase in recent years, especially in rural/tribal areas in India (Page, 2001: 47-68). Nevertheless, big differences still exist in broadband access between urban and rural set-ups. New wireless technologies such as WLL and 3G mobile phone networks will provide high speed internet services at sharply reduced costs, thereby dramatically increasing internet coverage in tribal areas. Various access tools are converging, becoming cheaper and more flexible. New mobile phones and laptops provide omnipresent access with ample functionality for communication, transactions and transfer of data. 4. The Policy Interventions Union and State governments are supporting development agencies and NGOs to setup community broadcasting services in remote areas based on very small aperture terminals (VSATs) with shared cost of access. This is replicated and upscaled in different policies at state and national level. Ensuring the sustainability of these community broadcasting experiments/services is a major challenge for both the government and the implementing agencies itsel (UNDP, 2004). Cost-sharing arrangements between local stakeholders, such as health centers, farmers organizations, schools and local governmental bodies, at tribal areas are taking place. A provision for payments for local community broadcasting services and to provide some financial strength to these community broadcasting experiments while making some shift in the policies can generate revenues to sustain these initiatives (Girard, 1992: 123-134). Tribal community should be encouraged to pay nominal price for the information provided by these community broadcasting services from the gains made through access to it. In return, these community broadcasting platforms can provide a learning environment for tribal community on the use of ICT driven broadcasting but also on jointly solving problems in their livelihoods (Moemeka, 1981: 28-36). 5. The Challenges Operating this kind of community broadcasting on mobile is really a tedious job. Lot of administrative, financial and technical resources is required to train people and to broadcast the news over mobile and cyber platform. Bridging the communication gap using mobile radio as a platform needs a lot of policy and regulatory support (Naronha, 2004). The server which Swara team is using right now is on rent basis and whenever the rent agreement is over or it doesnt renew, it becomes very difficult for the Swara team to manage because changing the server means you have to change the universal number each time. The management team of Swara also did not have an archive of phone numbers of people who called because the service gave them the option of anonymity. But the frequent change of servers will not go along with the anonymity principle. 6. Conclusion So, ultimately the challenges to this revolutionary initiative have been many. But the success of this radio in such a short span of time is definitely encouraging and can influence policy changes in communications. The radio, most importantly, has managed to form a linkage between rural and urban activists. Rural activists report about incidents in the hinterland, which are then picked up by urban activists who use their contacts in power circles to create an impact. The government has had many plans and theories for tribal development since Independence. But most of them are not reaching to them 276

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because of lack of communication channels focusing on their problems. This kind of alternative media platforms can now provide them a space to voice their problem and also to access all government information and services for their welfare. The tribal people have a great oral tradition. They are natural storytellers. We have to acknowledge their form of communication through their voices and their languages. We don't have to teach them how to report, we only need to see how their voice goes out to those in power. And that is where Swara like innovative initiatives comes in. References 1. Buckley, S. (2000). Radios New Horizons: Democracy and Popular Communication in the Digital Age. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2, 180187. 2. Dagron, A.G. (2001). Making Waves: Stories of Participatory Communication for Social Change. New York: The Rockfeller Foundation, 63 - 72. 3. Fraser, C. & Sonia, R.E. (2002). Community Radio for Change and Development. Development, 4, 6973. 4. Girard, B. (Ed.) (1992). A Passion for Radio: Radio Waves and Community. Canada: Black Rose Books, 123 134. 5. Mathur, J.C. and Neurath, P. (1959). An Indian Experiment in Farm Radio Forums. Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 65 71. 6. Moemeka, A.A. (1981). Local Radio: Community Education for Development. Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University Press Ltd., 28 36. 7. Naronha, Frederik. (2004). Indias reluctant march towards democratizing its airwaves. Available at http://www.radiorobinhood.fi/communityradios/articles.htm. Accessed November 15, 2005. 8. Page, D. and Crawley, W. (2001). Satellites over South Asia: Broadcasting, Culture and the Public Interest. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 47 68. 9. Pavarala, V. & Kanchan K. (2004). Enabling Community Radio: Case Studies in National Broadcasting Policy. MICA Communication Review, 1 (3), 622. 10. Sen, Ashish. (2004). Media Reform in India: Legitimizing Community Media. Media Development, 1, 1822. 11. Thompson, J.B. (1995). The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media. California: Stanford University Press, 89 97. 12. TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) (2004). Consultation Paper on Licensing Issues Relating to Community Radio Stations. Availbale at http://www.trai.gov.in. Accessed September, 15, 2012. 13. UNDP (United Nations Development Program) (2004). Background paper on Community Radio in India. Available at http://www.undp.com. Accessed September 15, 2012.

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Keralas Rural Empowerment And Social Up gradation By Akahaya Project

Bindu N Natarajan 1 * ABSTRACT Akshaya project, was started as a e-literacy program in Malappuram district in Kerala in November 2002 , as the state government of Kerala put into place a pilot project there , with the goal for one person in every family to be computer literate in that district. Its beneficiaries of the pilot project , are over 600,000 families in Malappuram of Kerala and this achievement was attained within a short period of 6 months. . Akshaya rolled out in all the districts in Kerala and evolved as one of the world's largest computer literacy mission . The project started with a simple mission ,but grew much to serve the public with state-funded computer access centers, and simultaneously led to a massive wireless infrastructure, providing a wide range of services and making way to many future opportunities. The services are in various fields like education ,training ,citizen services networking etc. It is now integrated with the NeGP projects as the CSC .The project services uplifted the life style of the common people in the rural area of Kerala. Keywords: e-gover nance ,common service center 1. History Akshaya was was introduced as part of introducing e-governance in Kerala. Detailed the discussions were conducted at District, Panchayat, Block Panchayats, Grama Panchayats and Municipality level and with other consultancy organizations like C-DIT .From this itt is found that the imparting of e-literacy to the common people is a pre-requisite for the effective implementation of e-governance.The Project Akshaya e- Kendra was formed to impart e- literacy to the people and primarily the project was piloted in Malappuram district. A survey in Malapuram district was held in 6.5 lakh houses and spatial mapping was done with the help of Town and Country Planning Department to identify locations to for the Akshaya center so that the centers are in locations where house wives and old aged people can come and participate in the training programs. The Akshaya project was launched at Trivandrum by Dr. A.P. Abdul Kalam, His Excellency, the former President of India on November 18, 2002. As the first phase, Akshaya centers were started. Allocation of Akshaya-e-Kendra , an ICT access point, one for every 1000 families living in two/three municipal or Panchayat wards was the most important strategic decision. So they became accessible within a walk able distance of one/two Kilo meter and this is the root cause of the accessibility and extended use of the various facilities available in Akshaya,.[1] Akshaya project was implemented as an ICT project by the Kerala State Information Technology Mission The Malappuram Akshaya pilot project started as the beginning of a State wide e-literacy program me was a successful one .Malappuram district is declared as the first totally e-literate district in the country. With this Akshaya e-services have been implemented in eight districts including Malappuram in the second stage .In the second stage, various other activities like G2E and G2C services , DTP services etc. were provided and a number of job opportunities were opened for the rural people who became e-literate. This was an awakening program for the remote village people especially for women and unemployed youth There after there is massive participation of the people in the activities of Akshaya .
1

S N COLLEGE,CHERTHALA *Corresponding Author: (Email: nbindu_1@yahoo.com, Telephone: +91- 9495975894)

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In the third phase Akshaya activities are being were extended to the remaining six districts of the State. There will be at least two centers in every village Panchayat. Electronic machinery were provided and the networking among the centers were made. The Kerala government also tied up with Tulip IT Services to implement a wireless network across the district for less than Rs 5 crore.[2] Akshaya kiosks run on Tulip's low-cost wireless technology, thus eliminating the need for telephone lines Thus the internet operations were made at a cheaper rate. This increased the enthusiasm of the people and they make use of the centers with much confidence. On completion of this phase , the project will provide selfemployment to around 3000+ persons and direct employment to about 3-5 persons in each of the Akshaya e-kendras It brought about an investment of around Rs. 100 crore s in the State and 87.50 percent of it in the rural sector. These targets are already being fulfilled. Indias central government plan, NeGP has 31 mission mode projects (MMP), and initiated with with 27 projects in various states. These are owned by concerned departments. The Department of Information Technology (DIT) provides technical support to these. 18 out of the 31 projects are being conducted and have over 150 categories of services available. Government of Kerala requested The Government of India to integrate the Akshaya Centers with the Common Service Centers scheme under the National EGovernance Programme (NeGP). This request was sanctioned and Akashaya became part of the integrated networking grid of e- governance in India. Accordingly all Akshaya Centers of Kerala are now Akshaya Common Service Centers (CSC). With this integration, all Akshaya CSCs are eligible for the CSC Broadband Concession Tariff.[3] 2. Prime Objectives Akshaya aims is to provide ICT accessibility and services to the reach of the common man Akshaya help to remove digital divide in the state by bridging the gap between the Information Rich and the Information Poor . Akshaya project strives to achieve addressing of the needs in three areas : 2.1 Skill Sets: Make at least one person in a family e-literate, in the 64 lakh families of the State. 2.2 Content Development: Document development in local language especially publishing in Malayalam in web and digital media , animation films creation etc.,. 2.3 Services Delivery: DTP,, e-learning, e-business, e-payment, e-governance etc to be carried out. Thus Akshaya acts as a media for the States overall development by bringing the government plans and grants to the beneficiaries.For eg:- ration card , e-grants and smart health card registrations can be done through akshaya. , By bringing ICT services to all categories of the of people it acts as a mechanism for improved status of life as they also participate in the government activities.Thus help to induce transparency in governance and help the overall socio-economic growth. 3. Activities Plan - Give e- literacy training for one person in a family for a period of 10 days. .Rs. 140 was fixed as tuition fee for 15 hour training programme (Grama Panchayat Rs. 80, Block Panchayat Rs. 20, Dist. Panchayat Rs. 20, beneficiary fee Rs. 20). Local bodies were responsible to confirm the involvement of community, civil society organizations, youth and welfare organizations, local bodies, etc for its implementation.[1] - Positioning Social Animators for linking Akshaya centers , citizens, local bodies and government - Determining strategies for establishing connectivity, creation of locally relevant documents etc. - Allocating of District Project Team in the districts.

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4. Benefits to be Achieved After the completion of the project - At least one computer literate person in every home in the State - Network of 3000 e-kendras throughout the State - Delivery of public service and e-governance applications through these e-kendras - Unmatched access for the rural population to ICT services - Generation of locally relevant e-content - 3000 direct employment opportunities and investment of over Rs. 100 crores - Cheaper Communication through Internet telephony, e-mail, chat etc using wireless technology. - ICT 4 D tools in Tele-health, Agriculture, Resource Management etc - Increased ,IT , PC and ICT applications penetration - e-pay of utility bills at single window system. - e-learning, , e-krishi and e-commerce at the doorsteps of the citizen [1] 5. Services Provided by Akshaya The services provided by Akshaya can be classified into four. - E-literazy programs - Citizen services - External access - Software Support 5.1. E-literazy programs Akshaya started as the e-literacy program and Malappuram is declared as the first e-literate district in India. Malappuram and Kannur districts were already declared 100% e-literate. So far around 33 lakhs beneficiaries were trained. At least one person per home is made e-literate through Akshaya , in the 64 lakh families in the state, that makes it the largest rural e-literacy training project in the world.[1] 5.2.Citizen services The Task Force on IT implementation in government also recommended to adopt a strategy of administrative reforms-based computerization simultaneously with highly visible and immediately penetrable citizen-centric projects. The approach to citizen interface was based on the assumption that all direct Government citizen interactions can be IT-enabled and can be categorized as making payments, getting entitlements, getting providing information and grievance redressel , etc. IT policy of the government required that the government should intervene to take the benefits of IT to the grass roots level. Starting from the e-literacy program, Akshaya grew in to a government supported service center in 2008 which act as a intermediary between the government and the people. Different types of applications forms, e-billing (water, electricity land phone university fees etc.) certificate ,e-krishi (online agricultural trading and updates on agricultural procedure, fertilizers etc.) e-vidya ( IT learning for e-literates and others) eticketing (online train ,flight ,bus ticket reservation etc) Online passport registration etc. can be performed using this portal. It offers a medical transcription course is also offered by this project. It also admits public grievance redressal, online admit cards, Janamithri Police station, developed a software which help to manipulate the financial administration process including the payroll, provident fund calculation etc for the government sector.Online tax payment can be also performed. These manifold activities of Akshaya reduced the long queues in the Government Offices and on the side of the common people ,the government services are provided at their door step and the service time is more than that of the government offices. Thus the interaction between the government and the public became more and different grants and other government helps reach the people in the right time . Digitized 280

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certificates are available online. This also reduced the interaction of the intermediaries which demand bribery and thus transparency is introduced in the government transactions. In July, 2012 over 1.35 lakhs digital certificates have been issued in Kannur and Palakkad Districts through Akshaya which proves that this application has gained popularity and trust among the citizens. [5] 5.2. External access Entegramam is an online community portal in Malayalam created and maintained by the citizens of each village. The Government facilitated setting up of the portal and allows villagers to submit articles which are edited by philanthropic editors who upload the articles on the portal. It is a main project funded by UNESCO in association with Akshaya. The project aimed at bringing forth web portals that cater to the needs of the citizens locally mostly published in the local languages.. 5. 4. Software Support Service and Payroll Administrative repository of Kerala (SPARK) is a software developed by Akshaya which performs G2E operations .In Kerala there are between 5 and 5.5 lakh employees working as Government servants. SPARK is a G2E integrated solution for Service and Payroll Management is an attempt to bring the payroll and finance related activities of these employees. SPARK has the provision as such in the Service book to trace service history, track record, bills/ reports/orders etc. This system allots Permanent Employee Number (PEN) on registering the Service Book of the employee Thereafter PEN will be the important code to identify the employee in the SPARK database. It will also capture the details of Loans, Advances and other subscriptions like LIC, SLI, GIS, FBS etc[1] 6. Credentials The achievements of Akshaya is honored by several awards. Prof. Kenneth Keniston , Founder and Director of MIT India Programme commented as There are many good projects sponsored by State Governments and NGOs which are admirable; but nowhere has the kind of vision and strategy been as demonstrable as in Akshaya. Neither do I think any other state has the wherewithal for accomplishing these because without literacy, without commitment on the part of the people concerned, without a certain level of social justice, these things would be very difficult to achieve [1] - Kerala IT's Akshaya project has won the Manthan Award South Asia 2010 in the e-governance category. The project bagged the award out of 434 nominations in 15 categories and emerged winner from 77 finalists. The award was received by Akshaya Director Korath V. Mathew in New Delhi.[1] - According to The Economic Times, a unique Kerala project that seeks to achieve e-literacy in the state has been selected for the prestigious Golden Nica award by the Austria-based Ars Electronica. Ars Electronica, a platform for digital arts and media, selected the Akshaya project in the Digital Communities category. The award carries a cash prize of 10,000 Euros (around Rs 5,50,000). [1] - India Tech Foundation- Telecom India 2005, Excellence Award 2005- Runner Up 1 - Silver Icon Award for Innovative Operations [4] - PC Quest Best IT Implementation Award 2004 [1] 7. Conclusion The Akshaya initiative to e-literate people is evolved into one of the most dynamic interactive tool in public-private partnerships in the State. This project has transformed Malappuram and other socially and economically backward districts of Kerala to e-literate ones. An e-literate mass of common people is the key component of any successful e-governance strategy. The first step of Akshaya is taking ICT to the common people especially in the rural area of Kerala. Kerala State IT Mission is credited with 281

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conceptualizing Akshaya, the first in the list of initiatives in Kerala, and perhaps in India, to reach out the benefits of ICT and IT to the masses. The project helped much in creating massive economic growth and creation of direct and indirect employment in the state by focusing on the various facts of e-learning, e-transaction, e-governance etc. The project is having a long-standing impact on the social, economic and political scenario of the State which is a model for other states having similar social and economic features as Kerala. Reference 1. http://www.akshaya.kerala.gov.in 2. http://www.itmission.kerala.gov.in/akshaya.html 3. http://www.nisg.org/kchome.php?page=395 4. http://www.ekkadesign.com/...award 5. http://keralaitnews.com/features/guest-articles/5299-avoiding-fraud-through-digital-certificatesthe-akshaya-way

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Transforming E-governance through Cloud computing architecture: Select Case Studies

Samarth Arora 1 * ABSTRACT Cloud Computing is opening up new vistas for reengineering of networked applications especially e-governance projects and supply chain logistics applications. The availability of various deployment Models (Public / Private / Hybrid Clouds) and forms of services i.e. Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas), Platform as a Service (Paas) and Software as a Service (Saas) promise enhanced flexibility in network operations, data access and interchange amongst network partners through service oriented architecture thus eliminating the errors occurring in message exchange, cost reduction by migrating to a opex( operating expenditure) model rather than a capex (capital expenditure) model and converging to a network wide harmonized system of data and information interchange . Despite such strategic advantages, the up scaling of this emerging new technology paradigm i.e. cloud computing in these applications is quite a challenge. This paper examines the key issues, Challenges and various Enablers and Barriers impacting up scaling of Cloud Computing in such applications in select e- governance projects in India and suggests a way forward. The paper synthesizes learnings of select case studies. . Keywords: Public/Private/hybrid clouds, Service models (Iaas/Paas/Saas), Data Security, Management, Ownership and Control, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Re-engineering, Grid computing, Virtualization, e-governance, E commerce, strategic reengineering, flexibility. 1. Introduction When IT was introduced in organizations in early 1990s, its role was limited primarily to automation and informating. With the emergence of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and convergence of IT and Communication technologies, ICT could be harnessed strategically to transformate various processes in an Organization. The transformation journey continued with deployment of Web Based Solutions for Networked Applications viz e- governance projects. These projects had limitations like silo and turf protection culture, varied practices, lack of seamless connectivity, large errors in message exchange, and disagreements on exchange protocols, underutilized infrastructure thus reducing the efficiency and efficacy of the network. The emergence of Cloud Computing provides opportunities for radical changes in the networked organizations. While Cloud Computing would is radically impact the resource management architecture, the rapidly increasing penetration of mobile phones, tablets and smart hand held devices is changing the users engagement in the e.goverence projects. The increase in usage of open source software is yet another dimension of the recent changes. Some of the key features of cloud computing which lead to strategic reengineering and providing flexibility for networked applications are depicted in Figure 1 and Table 1.

Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal, India *Corresponding Author: (Email: samarth.arora@learner.manipal.edu)

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Features

Fig .1 Cloud computing; Key Features Deployment Models Service categories On-demand selfPrivate Software-as-aservice (Internal) Cloud Service(SaaS) Broad network access Community cloud Resource pooling Rapid elasticity Measured Service Table1. Features, Models and Service forms of Cloud Architecture Platform-as-aService (PaaS) Public (External) Cloud Infrastructure-asa-Service (IaaS) Hybrid

2. Enablers and Barriers of Cloud Computing Readiness Adoption of cloud computing in strategic projects requires a reasonable readiness like laying down a legal framework, standards and addressing security concerns. Some of key issues related to Cloud readiness are depicted in Figure 2. [1][3][4]

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Fig. 2 Cloud computing Issues In a survey done by Business software alliance (BSA), USA, through a 7 policy issues based scorecard to evaluate cloud readiness, India ranks 19 out of the 24 countries surveyed. [8] These 24 countries account for 80% of global ICT market. Cloud Readiness is a major challenge to adopt cloud framework for egovernance projects. Some Key enablers and barriers in up scaling of Cloud Computing are tabulated in Table 2.[5][6] ENABLERS Cost reduction by Shift from Capex to Opex Convergence of standardisation and harmonisation. Growing complexity in community & network projects; (e-Governance) Facility of Pay as peruse Quick scale in & scale out o infrastructure based on need Flexibility to access resources anytime and anywhere. Scalability, interoperability, Efficiency, Virtuality. BARRIERS Low security Low data privacy and confidentiality Lack of legal understanding Loss of control and ownership Risk due to dependence on external entity Limit to high customization

Table.2. Enablers & Barriers for Cloud Readiness 3. Cloud Enabled Networked Applications Select Case Studies a) Easy and Flexible Access to Citizen Identity A case study of UID Project Unique Identification (UID), an e-Governance project in India is a unique mega e-Gov project with USP as Identity Certification as a service containing both demographic and biometrics data. The personal identity information is kept confidential through data encryption while other data is made available in public domain. The project is implemented through flexibility in technology, applications portfolio process and also governance structures. The application tools deployed are multimodal and modular, the processes have standards and governance is through public-private partnerships. Thus the entire project ensures a balance between flexibility and standardization. Its success depends on having a highly secure environment. The SWOT analysis is shown in Figure 3. STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES Unique Mega e-Governanc Continuous Data updation initiative. 1.2 Billion and storage. biometrics records. Mega Computing capability needs. Identity as a service. Assured revenue stream. Constantly being vigilant on security and privacy. OPPORTUNITIES THREATS All transactions / Substitution by other registrations need identity. identity numbers. No comprehensive unique Cumbersome access and Security. number available so far. 285

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Fig.3. UID; an e-Governance Initiative -A SWOT ANALYSIS The Cloud application can radically transform the Projects Efficacy. Residency of UID data on cloud and its secure access by various stakeholders by Digital Signatures or password control can reduce the network traffic on the main servers considerably increasing the efficiency of the system. b)Error Free Network Message Exchange System A case study of e-Trade project E-trade is one of the key e-governance community projects in India, whose main network partners are Customs, Banks, Shipping lines, Export Promotion Bodies, Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), Freight Forwarders etc. The objective of this project is to establish a seamless EDI connectivity amongst various network partners to facilitateconduct of international trade, as depicted in figure 4 below.

Figure 4 E-Trade Network Partners All network partners have leveraged process reengineering to harness benefits of EDI technology. The flexibility has been primarily ensured in the areas of platform and architecture neutrality, options in security access features, message exchange structures, co-existence of EDI & non-EDI documents for all applications etc. The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) which is one of the key network partners has adopted a flexible EDI model very effectively with the above key network partners.[4] This organization issues permissions and authorizations for imports and exports. Its main EDI interfaces are shown in figure 5. The online application is filed by exporters/importers through DGFTs website. The model has neutrality in platform/architecture, optional security access features i.e. either Digitally signed or password based, offline/online uploading, compatibility of different message exchange formats with different network partners, support of all B2G, G2B, G2G forms as the flexibility features.

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DGFT Operations (Integrated View) EXPORTER
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Figure 5 DGFTs e-Interfaces The SWOT Analysis of the e-Trade Project is shown in Figure 6 below.

Strengths Weaknesses Web based reengineering Silo culture constraints Win-Win for all Time consuming agreements Reduction of transaction cost and time Neutrality in various processes/features. Opportunities Threats Process reengineering Turf and domain wars Harmonisation Data errors Service oriented Architecture (SOA) Different levels of readiness Fast changing technology Figure 6 SWOT Analysis of e-trade The SWOT analysis shows that Cloud architecture can significantly transform the network interactions and address the weaknesses and threats. The organization can enhance flexibility and eliminate message exchange errors and traffic by using the framework of cloud computing and service oriented architecture (SOA). The existing message exchange format creates burden of high level of message exchange integrity for error free transmission. This limits the flexibility in data sharing between two partners as it is contingent on the data exchange in on agreed message exchange format. To enhance flexibility and eliminate errors, a service-oriented architecture wherein all the network partners agree to reside their data on a e-trade public cloud with agreements on data access through secure access control is a flexible solution. The SOA architecture has been recently used in one of the extensions of e-trade project where in the foreign exchange realizations are uploaded by banks on DGFTs server and this data is further linked with shipment documents on website by users through the repository concept of data in an SOA architecture .The cloud computing framework promises, a versatile and flexible reengineering solution for message exchange the e-trade project. 4. Concluding Remarks. The case studies and literature review indicate that Cloud Computing enabled Network applications have enhanced efficiency and efficacy on various functionality attributes as summarized in Figure 7 below.BPR supported by different deployment models and service forms leads to tradeoff between security and flexibility. The strategic benefits accrue maximally in the e-trade project where process complexity is highest.

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Functionality Attribute Message Interchange

Existing Network High network Traffic & Errors leading to erosion of Efficacy

Cloud Architecture SOA enhances efficiency and efficacy leading to error free network

Security & Confidentiality framework Resource Expansion Legality Framework Harmonization Flexibility in User Interface

Multiple bilateral agreements Systemic. Standardized Time consuming & lack of involving Cloud Service understanding Provider Capital Intensive leading to underutilization National Laws adequate. Partner specific Driven by Partners. Could be 24X7X365 Elastic saves Cost. International agreements. Network Specific 24X7X365 guaranteed. is almost

Figure 7: A Comparative assessment of Functionality attributes. The comparative assessment of the two e-governance projects on various functionality attributes suggests that Cloud Architecture can address the operational limitations and system issues of e-governance projects very aptly. These offer tremendous benefits of Efficiency and Efficacy enhancement. No doubt, bold decision to migrate critical infrastructure of e-governance projects to private cloud is a testimony that networked applications would witness a paradigm change in their operations. 5. Acknowledgements I am thankful to Professor Dr. D.K. Banwet , IIT Delhi , Professor Shampa Chakraborty, HOD, Computer Science , NSIT Dwarka New Delhi & Mr. A.K.Sinha, Senior Technical Director, NIC, New Delhi for their guidance and valuable technical inputs. References 1. Priya Metri and Geeta Sarote, Privacy Issues and Challenges in Cloud Computing, International Journal of Advanced Engineering Sciences and Technologies, Vol. No. 5. Issue No. 1, 001-006, 2011. 2. Computers and Technology, Key Features of Cloud Computing Strategy, http://www.technethuancavelica.com, 2011. 3. A.K. Chakravarti, Cloud Computing Challenges and opportunities, www.cdac.in 2010. 4. R. Rajeswari, S.A.V. SatyaMurti, M.L. Jayalal and R. Jehadesan, Moving from Grid to Cloud Computing; The challenges in an existing Computational Grid Set Up, International Journal of Computer Science and Communication, Vol.1, No.2 July-Dec.,2010 pp 415418. 5. Samarth Arora, Cloud Computing Issues, Challenges and Road Map, National Conference on Information Sciences, Manipal, April 2012. 6. Samarth Arora , Leveraging Cloud Computing For Flexibility and Agility in Business Operations Select Case Study, Glogift 2012, University of Vienna, July 2012. 7. Rajiv Arora and D.K.Banwet, E-Commerce Implementation in India A Study of Select Organizations, Asia Pacific Development Journal, Vol10, No.1, June 2003. 8. BSA Global Cloud Computing Scorecard, A Blue Print for Economic Opportunity, Business Software Alliance (BSA) - June 2012 288

A Validated Citizen-Centric Approach using Delphi Technique For Converging Indigenous Knowledge Systems using ICT
Charru Malhotra 1 *,V.M.Chariar 2 and L.K. Das 3 ABSTRACT Citizen-centric approach towards design of e-government initiatives insists that the needs and aspirations of the citizens must form the core nuclei of the entire process. However, the majority of prevailing initiatives do not acknowledge the contextual influences on lives of rural citizens in developing countries like India. The present study attempts to propose a new Delphi-validated approach for design of such citizen-centric egovernment initiatives. Authors have aptly christened this approach as Government-toCitizen-to-Government-G2C2G framework that aims to amalgamate rural contextual factors, represented by local and indigenous knowledge systems (LINKS) using ICT. The existing constructs in popular models have been expanded to include Citizens Characteristics, Goal-Task Characteristics in it. It further advocates compulsory inclusion of two new constructs viz. Regional Characteristics and Eco-system Characteristics. e-Government initiatives based on the proposed approach are most likely to capture the diverse profile of citizens as well as meaningfully address local governance goals by utilizing LINKS for defining rural reality. Keywords: Local and indigenous knowledge systems (LINKS), rural e-governance initiatives-ReGI, citizen-centric approach, Technology acceptance and diffusion models, Design Approach, Delphi technique, User-Centred Design(UCD), ICT for Development (ICT4D), National e-governance plan (NeGP), G2C2G approach.

1. Introduction Apathetic response of citizens to any new technology could indeed spell its eventual doom. For any technology led development especially ICT for Development (ICT4D) to be realistic, there should be supremacy of citizens in delineating its core components and processes. However, literature (for instance, Lee-Kelley & Kolsaker, 2004), regretfully states that most of the prevailing e-government initiatives have been designed on the understanding of the needs from the governments side, termed as the supply side rather than from the point of view of the citizens themselves, the demand side. Perhaps that is why the actual benefits or services for which the citizens could essentially utilize these ICT initiatives remain largely unaddressed and un-deciphered, especially in rural areas of developing countries like India. With special regard to India, most of the mission mode projects (MMPs) launched for rural areas under its prestigious National e-governance plan (NeGP), such as Common Service centers (CSCs) have been customized more from technology perspective rather than from the contextual needs of the rural citizens (Gupta, 2010). Similarly the web-portals designed especially for villagers (for instance, chaakari.co.in), albeit some of them at beta level (for instance, npibeta.nic.in/topics/rural/rural-employment), put a blinkered focus on providing rural employment opportunities. None of them provide relevant local
1

Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA), Delhi, India *Corresponding Author: (Email: charrumalhotra@gmail.com, Telephone: +91- 9818529298) 2 CRDT-IITD, Delhi, India
3

IDDC, IIT-D, New Delhi, India

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information in local language for regional job opportunities existing specifically in nearby local regions for majority of the grassroots communities as artisans, small scale traders etc. Perhaps that is why such rural ICT/e-government initiatives have not confirmed to be beneficial for Indian rural populace and bear out with wobbly future in the longer run. Understandably significant deliberations have emerged (for instance, Burn & Robins, 2003; Donnelly, 1999; Fors & Moreno, 2002; Pujar et al, 2008) to imbibe a citizen-centric approach in design of rural ICT/e-government initiatives. The concept of citizen-centered design has emerged from the underlying philosophy of User Centered Design (UCD), which puts forth that users must stay as the central focus of the entire design process (e.g. Beyer & Holtzblatt, 1998). From the perspective of e-government implementation, since the user is a citizen, User Centered Design (UCD) has been referred to as Citizen Centered Design-CCD (Khatre, 2007). Various connotations have been attached with the term citizen-centricity in the literature. For instance, Lofstedt (2007, pp. 470) puts forth that for an e-government initiative to be citizen-centric, its services must be tailored to fulfill the citizen needs rather than the needs of the agency delivering them. Jones, Hackney, and Irani (2007) further insist that e-government initiatives should keep adapting continually to provide public services customized to personal preferences of the citizens. Saxena (2005, pp. 505) takes the concept a notch further by saying e-government initiatives are deemed citizen-centric, only if they make governance efficient, effective (outcome driven), politically manageable, open, democratic and can enhance the capacity of the government using ICTs to serve the needs of diverse groups. In brief, the principles of citizen-centricity insist that besides other technology-considerations, it is important to take input from the cognitive behavior, prevailing knowledge, community innovations, local environment, and the needs of users/citizens. Such a paradigm, therefore, necessitates more of socio-cultural approach based on multi-disciplinary perspectives rather than an understanding of technical aspects of information systems only, the latter being also referred to as technology-centric approach. Adoption of restricted technology-centric approach creates a huge chasm between the technology-based design and contextual reality of these initiatives (Dada, 2006), especially in the rural areas. 2. Contextual Factors in Rural areas of Developing Countries A comprehensive review of the literature indicates that, the contextual factors exerting influence on rural ICT/ e-government initiatives could be numerous and vary from region to region. As collated by Malhotra, Chariar, and Das (2011) some of the indicative (and not exhaustive) categories of contextual factors are listed as: - Citizen Characteristics: This category includes important aspects of user profile based on age, gender, education, income and occupation of people (Dwivedi et al., 2006); user-uncertainty. - Regional Administrative Culture: This category includes various facilitating/ inhibiting conditions provided by government (Hung et al., 2005), work culture in administrative organization (Kraemer & Dedrick, 1997), risk-reduction strategies and so on. - Physical Infrastructure: It includes IT based and related factors such as access to ICTs, e-services and mass media channels (Dimitrova & Chen, 2006; Fang, 2002; Mutula, 2005; Oxendine, Borgida, Sullivan & Jackson 2003); security concerns (Jarvenpaa, Tractinsky & Sarinen,1999) and supporting infrastructure (Ramachandran, 2003; Ratnadeep & Hara, 2006). - Socio-Cultural Factors: This category covers mainly regional social and cultural concerns (Carter & Weerakkody, 2008; Kanungo, 2004). It also gets manifested in idiosyncrasies of particular groups reflecting the groups societal affiliation and position(Penz, 2005) and moves on to address local regional concerns such as civic mindedness of the populace, trust factor (Belanger & Carter, 2005; Bhattacherjee, 2002; Gefen et al., 2002 ; Navarra & Cornford, 2003), resistance to change (Margetts & Dunleavy, 2002) and so on.

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In this study, the acronym LINKS has been used to refer to indigenous knowledge systems representing contextual influences in rural scenario. 3. Need for the Present Study Contextual factors, represented by LINKS, are very region specific and found entrenched deeply in the basic fiber of a rural community by way of native culture, practices and process framework (Ghose, 2007). However, no specific methodology or framework has been found to imbue the diverse rural context of as to make such e-government initiatives truly citizen-centric. The related literature has not been forthcoming in presenting any explicit strategies for responding to contextual influences of rural reality using ICT. Even the popular technology models, such as Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT, Rogers, 1962), Technology Acceptance Model (TAM, Davis, 1989) and Task-Technology Fit model (TTF, Goodhue, 1988), seem to have given more importance to inclusion of technology-based constructs over socio-cultural contextual constructs for deciphering diffusion or acceptance of ICT based initiatives. Undoubtedly, these models form a very good starting point for understanding the technology aspect of ICT based implementation but leave a scope for inculcating a citizen-centric approach in rural egovernment initiatives (ReGI). The present study therefore, attempts to bridge this chasm of theoretical insinuations and actual implementation of citizen centricity in rural e-government implementation by reflecting the rural contextual influences in ICT implementation. 4. Methodology Substantial primary and secondary research constitute the genesis of the proposed validated citizencentric framework, christened as LINKS based Government-to-Citizen-to-Government-G2C2G framework abbreviated as G2C2G approach (Malhotra, Chariar and Das, 2009). - At the outset, an extensive primary field research had been undertaken, from the years 20062009, of five e-government initiatives (TARAhaat in Madhya Pradesh, Common Service CentersCSC in Haryana, Akshaya in Kerala, Nemmadi and Bhoomi in Karnataka, e-Mitra in Rajastan) implemented in rural areas of India. This stage of the study has been referred as Phase-I, details of which do not fall within the purview of this study. On basis of findings of Phase-I, the authors had initially conceptually envisaged a set of four constructs to be considered in the proposed G2C2G approach. - Primary research had been coupled with comprehensive review of literature to understand the design and implementation issues impeding existing e-government initiatives to be citizencentric. Three popular technology models viz. IDT (Rogers, 1962), TAM (Davis, 1989) and TTF (Goodhue, 1988) have inspired the genesis of the proposed approach. Of all the three considered technology models, TTF model had been treated as starting point to depict the basic interrelations and detailed attributes, which were further morphed for suggesting the G2C2G approach. - Before propounding this novel approach, its systematic validation had been deemed equally important. Since there were no adequate models or past data available for similar type under consideration, therefore Delphi technique was considered appropriate to validate the proposed G2C2G approach. Literature vouches Delphi technique to be a good decision making technique that rests with all kinds of ideas it can iteratively generate (Lourdes, Vincent & Sonia, 2005) and is applicable for innovating cases where no historical data is available (Linstone & Turoff, 1975). Details of Delphi Implementation to Validate the proposed Approach After an exhaustive academic rigor, forty-eight Delphi experts had been shortlisted for undertaking the Delphi technique. These experts had been chosen in a balanced manner ensuring equal and adequate representation of international and national experts drawn from the research, industry, media, academia, government, social sector and local bodies. Some organizations included London School of Economics, McGill University Canada, ACU-Australia, Management Development Institute Haryana, IIMs, IITs, National Informatics Centre, ILFS, and Department of Information Technology from India and so on. A 291

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web-based Delphi technique, wherein these experts were sent online questionnaires in three recursive rounds, had been used to compile a body of knowledge from these Delphi experts to establish content validity of the proposed G2C2G approach. The web-based method had also assured speed, cost-benefit, anonymity and confidentiality than the traditional paper-based Delphi procedures (Hiltz, Turoff & Johnson, 1989). Delphi rounds undertaken to validate the proposed approach has been referred as Expert Opinion Rounds (EOR). EOR commenced in December-2009 and was accomplished by March-2010.In all there were three iterative rounds undertaken, referred as EOR-I, EOR-II and EOR-III. The quantitative as well as the qualitative summary of the responses received from all the forty-eight experts was collated in a new questionnaire and subsequently emailed to all the Delphi experts to elicit their response. Special care had been undertaken to cluster the qualitative aspect of EOR with respect to the comments received from the experts (clustering techniques followed for grouping these comments is beyond the scope of this paper). The mean scores of all the three rounds and quantitative analysis of their comments and debate on these comments had helped to determine the acceptance or rejection of various constructs and attributes of the suggested G2C2G approach. Attributes garnering mean value of affirmative responses more than 85% were considered acceptable in the approach. 5. The Proposed Citizen-centric approach . Initially, on the basis of findings of Phase-I, authors had incorporated four constructs in the proposed G2C2G approach viz. Citizen Characteristics (CC), Goal-Task Characteristics (G-TC), Ecosystem/Environment Characteristics (EC) and e-Technology characteristics (e-TC). Further to these four constructs, the analysis of the qualitative responses of EOR-I, also led to the formulation of a new construct to respond to the regional variations. This new construct has been referred as Regional Characteristics, the details of which follow subsequently. It was found out that all the five constructs, had elicited affirmative responses from the Delphi experts with mean values greater than the proposed 90% (Figure-1).
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Figure 1: Constructs for the Proposed G2C2G framework Further to this, percentage calculations of the responses were also done for the attributes of each of these five constructs and conclusive remarks were drawn from these results to finalize the attributes for these constructs. The proposed definition, justification and the list of attributes for each of the five constructs of the proposed approach is listed herewith. 1. Citizen Characteristics (CC): As governance transforms from centralized to decentralized and is becoming more participative in nature, citizens have an increasingly greater role and voice in ICT4D implementation. Hence, Citizen Characteristics-CC forms an essential construct to be considered while designing the rural e-government initiatives (ReGI). CC is a modified version of Individual Characteristics of TTF model, enhanced in its scope to represent the profile of people as citizens (both present end-users as well as the expected users in future) and not merely the end-users of technology. CC could be defined as distinctive features of the rural populace that would help to distinguish an individual end-user (or majority of them), their preferences, social orientation and other such attributes. Authors had initially suggested seven attributes and Delphi experts added six new ones in EOR-I (Figure292

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2. Goal-Task Characteristics (G-TC): The findings of this study denounce technology as the means and not as an end in itself to achieve goals of governance at the grassroots. These goals are several, including poverty-reduction, non-discriminatory access to government services, information, genderequality and so on. This learning led to a very important implication for the proposed G2C2G framework to focus primarily on the governance goals than the usual mere delineation of tasks comprising ReGI. Because of this learning, this construct is an enhancement over the conventional Task Characteristics of TAM model (Davis, 1989). Goals of ReGI could be defined as the, overarching aim of a rural egovernment initiative to eventually attain the goals of governance that help in building an enabling environment conducive for rural development. Goals could be identified either through primary research of the region under consideration or from the existing norms established by framework of Good Governance, Millennium Development Goals and so on. The attainment of these ReGI goals is enabled by accomplishment of tasks. Tasks could be defined as the actions carried out by the citizens in turning inputs into outputs for achieving the predefined goals. For example, Status of citizens grievances or feedback about performance of local functionaries are examples of tasks related to the ReGI goal of Ensuring Transparency. The attributes of the Goal-Task Characteristics should be such that accomplishment of a task using ReGI must move a citizen closer to achievement of governance goals. The authors had suggested eight attributes and the Delphi experts had added eleven new attributes. Out of these total nineteen attributes, fourteen attributes have qualified for being retained in the G2C2G framework, by scoring an average response of Yes from more than 85% of the Delphi experts over the three Delphi rounds (Figure-3).

C om pu te rs el f-e ffi ci en cy Ed uc Ge at nd io e Pr n al r im bk e oc gd cu p a In tio co S n o m C iti Su cia e sl lc ze b ab ns s o m s a i dia p os ry w ar iti en oc on es cu p s/ at ac i ce ons pt Te an Sa ch ce m n o pl C lo om e gy st ud mu ex A ni y p. ge ty of s pr C p iti ze eci ofil fic e n s a da tio ily ns fa ro m u tin ily e m em be rs

2). Of all these thirteen attributes, six attributes, viz. computer self-efficiency, gender profile, educational background, prime occupation, income slabs and social composition have garnered more than 85% of affirmative responses from the Delphi experts. These six attributes have been considered to be included as the 100% accepted attributes for CC 80% in the 60% proposed G2C2G 40% approach and rest of the 20% attributes below 85% had been 0% ignored.

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Figure 2: Attributes of Citizen Characteristics

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0%

Figure 3: Attributes of the Goal-Task Characteristics 3. Eco-system /Environment Characteristics: As already elaborated in the previous section, for a ReGI to be more effective in the rural context, an adequate analysis and incorporation of rural space defined by rural contextual factors is important. Several philosophers (for instance Agarwal, Angst, & Karahanna, 2006) refer to this space by representation of compatibility construct of Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT), but as already stated above that the findings of Phase-I had confirmed that there is a need for separate construct to represent the local and indigenous knowledge systems (LINKS) prevalent in villages of the developing countries like India. The inclusion of Eco-system/Environment Characteristics-EC addresses this need. EC could be defined as the prevalent knowledge, traditional skills, local resources, community beliefs and norms of the existing systems, with respect to which the proposed rural e-government initiative (ReGI) is being designed. Of the set of eight attributes suggested by the authors and two new attributes suggested by Delphi, five attributes had finally qualified for being retained to represent e-C in the G2C2G approach after three Delphi rounds (Figure-4).

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Figure 4: Attributes of Eco-System/ Environment 4. e-Technology Characteristics (e-TC): Technology forms the backbone of an e-government initiative and serves as the main tool to provide services and information to the rural citizens. Phase-I findings also led to the understanding that the user-friendliness of an e- technology could be a preferred option, but not the only pre-requisite for its sustained usage in the rural areas. The construct of e-Technology characteristics (e-TC) is representative of the Information Systems and Services of the TTF model (Goodhue, 1988) and also includes representations for Perceived Ease of Use and Perceived Usefulness of TAM (Davis, 1989) as mediating constructs. E-TC, as already defined in literature stands identified as new and continuously evolving IT-based platform that includes, but is not limited to, telecommunication products such as mobile phones, information kiosks, world wide web sites, multimedia, or any interconnected systems, software based applications and support services that are designed to facilitate information sharing capabilities which are essential for e-governance implementation. Of the set of eight attributes initially suggested by authors and ten new attributes added by Delphi consensus, eleven attributes finally qualified for being retained in the G2C2G approach after three Delphi rounds (Figure 5). 5. New Construct: Regional Characteristics (RC) Background of the Construct There were several Delphi experts who had suggested that there are numerous regional variations in developing countries like India defined by its geographical/demographic indicators, infrastructure, governance needs, local resources available etc. that could affect design process for ReGI to a substantial extent. Therefore these Delphi experts had directly insisted or had implicitly suggested in EOR-I, inclusion of a new construct viz. Regional Characteristics to reflect the regional diversity to which the citizens belong. Some justifications for its inclusion, were: Citizens are the main stakeholders in the process of e-governance. Their characteristics will also vary hugely in a diverse country like India. Say for example, the rural citizens of Gujarat will be more developed in a socio-economic sense than the rural citizens of Bihar and their perspectives will also differ [EOR1, Expert No.43]. Region selection is important and needs vary from region to region [EOR1, Expert No.59]. When suggested for consensus, in EOR-II, 92% of the Delphi experts supported its inclusion, therefore, the construct stood accepted in the suggested G2C2G approach. Regional Characteristics could be 295

go v. so ca lu lr tio es ns ou ou r s ce C s om H fo is rg m to un ov ry ic . o a H ft t ea i ra on lth di m t /d io ea is na ns as lg te ov rs .s en C ol ol P de ut la re m bo io va ic ns ra ili to tiv ng th e co e d re ev m m g el io C un op on n ity .o tin f be kn ui lie ty ow fs b/ le w fo d ge tr r th ad e iti go on v. al is & su pr e C es om Lo en ca m t m un lC et ity u ho ltu re d re sp & on T se ra di s ti in on pa s st si tu at io ns Lo In di ge n

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defined as the diverse regional, capital and geographical variations of the area in which the ReGI is to be deployed. Of the set of nine new suggested attributes for Regional Characteristics, six attributes qualified (Figure-6) for being retained in the G2C2G approach after three Delphi rounds.
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on te n o f t/ in ic l o c for al al m a se t la cu C n ion o rit Te st gu a y & c o ge H hn f A Tr /W i ca cc e ai ni Se l su ss R ng cu pp ep D of ri ty o r r t D ese ata st i es nt ak ssu m ig at e a e S ho s n n i o f on ag oc ld a i U se mu l V em al S ers r lti ivi en u pp t co p d o n t le a n e Att s r ro i rt c lle ce s o b u f te s d in s m ser s te vi e A ch ce r va ac s il a tiv ani sm e bl in e M IT ter s Fe ai f ed nte Po Res ace ba na l it ou ck nc ica rc R eg ab e M l su es io o p e ut na p c ld th h an ort e em i te s m an c s d Op h no fo en lo rt gy he pl a te tfo r ch m no lo gy Ph ys U se

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Figure 5: Attributes of e-Technology characteristics (e-TC)

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G eo gr ap hi ca Pr lI In im nd fr ar ic as y at tr La or uc ng s tu ua re ge A v of ai la C bl om e C m rit un ic i ca al G tio ov n er na nc e ne ed s C iti So ze ci n al G ro ne up tw s or ks Lo /b on ca di lt ng ec B hn ur ic A ea cc al uc es re ra so si tic bi ur l it ce se y s tu av p & ai la re bl la e tio n w ith go v.

Accepted Yes Rejected Yes

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Figure 6: Attributes of Regional Characteristics (RC) In brief, the proposed citizen-centric G2C2G approach involves citizen at the centre of the entire process with five constructs and their respective validated attributes encompassing the entire design process for ReGI being innovated (Figure 7). 296

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Figure-7: The Constructs and Attributes of the Proposed G2C2G framework 6. Varied Stages Required for Rolling out the Proposed G2C2G Framework in the Rural Areas The life cycle of an initiative based on the proposed framework would proceed on the following suggested stages. Stage-I: As necessitated by citizen-centric approach, the first step towards design of a ReGI using the proposed G2C2G approach is to identify Citizen Characteristics and Regional Characteristics of the region. This could be done by extensive field research to understand well the grassroots issues, local needs and citizen-profile through observation, semi-formal interviews, informal focus group discussions, local workshops with initial preparedness done for this Stage done by referring to the relevant secondary sources. The data captured at this stage would help to delineate the citizens local profile and contextual limitations of the region. Stage-II: At this stage, on basis of the data collected from Stage-I, the implementing agency must explicitly prioritize the governance goals and the tasks required to be achieved it. For example if Stage-I reveals that accountability is the immediate local concern of the local citizens then the tasks to be addressed by a G2C2G based ReGI would be application centered on Right to Information or/and automated feedback mechanisms about performance of local functionaries and so on. Stage-III: In this stage, the attributes that are defined as a part of Eco-system/Environment Characteristics are captured to address the concerns that had emerged from the previous two stages. Relevant local and indigenous knowledge systems should be identified and recorded with liberal use of 297

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participatory methodologies tools and techniques, including participatory rural appraisal (PRA), site observation, focused group discussions, and so on. Once the local knowledge of the area has been identified, it should be validated and enhanced (if need be) through further discussions with experts or with community seniors. Stage-IV: The validated and enhanced local knowledge, captured during Stage-I and Stage-III) could then be integrated with the proposed e-technology construct for storage and further diffusion to attain the goals and tasks identified through the Goal-Task Characteristics (Stage-II). Choice of these technologies must be done keeping in view the citizen profile (Citizen Characteristics) and Regional Characteristics (RC) to ensure smooth acceptance and maintenance of technologies. Stage-V: This life cycle culminates in the development as governed by software engineering strategies of e-government initiative. It is pertinent to mention that all the above-mentioned stages conceived for roll out of citizen-centric egovernance initiatives based on the proposed G2C2G approach are open and not conclusive. These stages are expected to have better mechanisms to capture and respond to citizens feedback at each of these stages. e-Government initiatives based on this approach are, therefore, expected to be totally flexible to accommodate citizens needs and their governance expectations while being firmly rooted in contextual layers of the local knowledge. The astute application of the proposed citizen-centric approach would serve as an enabler for active citizens participation in the processes of rural governance. 7. Concluding Remarks Espousing a G2C2G framework is eventually likely to enhance citizens acceptability and trust on ICT based initiatives and raise citizen-satisfaction with government services and enhance citizens participation in the local governance. However, it must be bought out here that the dimensionality of the proposed G2C2G approach needs to be tested in the field, to validate the rigor of the proposed approach in diverse settings. What remains unchallenged is that such citizen-centric ICT based initiatives would endeavor to guarantee equitable representation, social inclusion and accountability to the rural citizens, which are cornerstone of good governance. References 1. Agarwal, R., Karahanna, E., & Angst, C.M. (2006). Reconceptualizing compatibility beliefs in technology acceptance research. MIS Quaterly, 30(4), 781-804. 2. Belanger, F., & Carter, L. (2005). The utilization of e-government services: citizen trust, innovation and acceptance factors. Information Systems Journal, 15, 5-25. 3. Beyer, H., & Holtzblatt, K. (1998). Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN: 1-55860-411-1. 4. Bhattacherjee, A. (2002). Individual trust in online firms: scale development and initial trust. Journal of Management Information Systems, 19(1), 211-41. 5. Burn, J., & Robins, G. (2003). Moving towards e-Government: A case study of organisational change processes. Logistics Information Management, 16(1), 25-35. 6. Carter, L., & Weerakkody, V. (2008). E-government adoption: a cultural comparison. Information Systems Front, 10, 473-482. 7. Das, L.K. (2005). Culture as the Designer. Design Issues, 21(4), 41-53. 8. Davis, F.D. (1989). Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use and User Acceptance of Technology. MIS Quarterly, 13, 319-340. 9. Dimitrova, D.V., & Chen, Yu-Che., (2006). Profiling the adopters of e-government information and services: The influence of psychological characteristics, civic mindedness and information channels. Social Science Computer Review, 24, 172. 298

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10. Donnelly, M. (1999). Making the difference: Quality strategy in the public sector. Managing Service Quality, 9(1), 47-52. 11. Dwivedi, Y. K., Papazafeiropoulou, A., Gharavi, H., & Khoumbati, K. (2006). Examining the socio-economic determinants of adoption of an e-Government initiative 'Government Gateway'. The Electronic Government- An International Journal, 3(4), 404-419. 12. Fang, Z. (2002). E-government in digital era: concept, practice, and development. International Journal of the Computer, Internet and Information, 20, 193-213. 13. Fors, M., & Moreno, A. (Eds.). (2002). The benefits and obstacles of implementing ICTs strategies for development from a bottom-up approach. Aslib Proceedings: 54(3), 198-206: MCB UP Ltd. ISSN 0001-253X. doi: 10.1108/00012530210441746. 14. Gefen, D., Warkentin, M., Pavlou, P.A., & Rose, G.M. (2002). Encouraging Citizen Adoption of eGovernment by Building Trust. Electronic Markets: the International Journal of Electronic Commerce & Business Media, 12(3), 157-162. 15. Ghose, J.R. (2007). Digital Video in Applied Research, i4d, December, pp. 52. 16. Goodhue, D.L. (1988). IS attitudes: Towards theoretical and definition clarity. Database, 41, 615. Goodhue, D.L. (1995).Understanding user evaluation of information systems. Management Science, 41, 18271844. 17. Grimsley, M., Meehan, A., & Tan, A. (2007). Evaluative design of e-government projects: A community development perspective. Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, 1(2), 174-193. 18. Gupta, M.P. (2010). Tracking the evolution of e-governance in India, International Journal of Electronic Government Research, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 46-58. 19. Hiltz, S. R., Turoff, M., & Johnson, K. (1989). Experiments in-group decision making: Disinhibition, de-individuation, and group process in pen name and real name computer conferences. Journal of Decision Support Systems, 5, 217-232. 20. Hung, S.Y., Chang, C.M., & Yu, T.J. (2005). Determinants of user acceptance of the eGovernment services: The case of online tax filing and payment system. Government Information Quarterly, 23, 97-122. 21. Jarvenpaa, S.I., Tractinsky, N., & Sarinen, L. (1999). Consumer trust in an internet store: a cross cultural validation. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 5(2). 22. Jones, S., Hackney, R., & Irani, Z. (2007). Towards e-government transformation: conceptualizing citizen engagement. Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, 1(2), 145-152. 23. Kanungo, S. (2004). On the Emancipatory Role of Rural Information Systems. Information Technology and People, 17(4), 40722. 24. Khatre, D. 2007. Indian e-Government Initiative: An Ideal Case for Universal Design and Usability, Design for All Institute of India's Newsletter, April 2007 and CHI Bangalore's Community Portal. 25. Kraemer, K.L., & Dedrick, J. (1997). Computing and Public Organizations. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 7, pp. 89-113. 26. Lee-Kelley, L., & Kolsaker, A. (2004). E-government: The fit between supply assumptions and usage drivers. Electronic Government: An International Journal, 1(2), 130-140. 27. Linstone, H. A., & Turoff, M. (Eds.), (1975). The Delphi Method: Techniques and Applications. Adison-wesley: ISBN 9780201042948. 28. Lofstedt, U. (2007a). Social systems design as a vehicle towards local public e-services for and by citizens. Systemic Practice and Action Research, 20, 467-476. 29. Lourdes, T., Vicente, P., & Sonia, R. (2005). E-government and the transformation of public administrations in EU countries: Beyond NPM or just a second wave of reforms? Online Information Review, 29(5), 531-553. Retrived July 2008, from http://www.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/14684520510628918. 299

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30. Malhotra,C., Chariar, V M & Das, L K (2011). Citizen-centricity for e-Goverance initiatives in Rural Areas. Published online on Governance Knowledge Centre (htttp://indigovernance.gov.in), portal of Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances,DAR&PG, Government of India; March 2011 31. Malhotra,C., Chariar, V M & Das, L K. (2009). User Centered Design Model (G2C2G) for Rural e-Governance Projects. International Journal of e-Governance (IJEG), Submission code: IJEG-4838, Inderscience Publishers, ISSN (Online): 1742-7517 - ISSN (Print), April 2009: pp. 1742-7509. 32. Margetts, H., & Dunleavy, P., (2002). Cultural barriers to e-government. Working paper. London: University College London and London School of Economics, National Audit Office. 33. Mutula, S. M. (2005). Peculiarities of the digital divide in Sub-Saharan Africa. Program: Electronic Library and Information Systems, 39(2), 122-138. 34. Navarra, D.D., & Cornfford, T. (2003). A policy making view of e-government innovations in public governance. Proceedings of the Ninth Americas Conference on Information System. Tampa, Florida. 35. Oxendine, A., Borgida, E., Sullivan, J. L., & Jackson, M.S. (2003). The importance of trust and community in developing and maintaining a community electronic network. International Journal of Human Computer Studies, 58, 671-696. 36. Padovitz A., Loke S. W., & Zaslavsky A. (2004). Towards a Theory of Context Spaces. Workshop on Context Modeling and Reasoning (CoMoRea ), at 2nd IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communication (PerCom'04). Orlando, Florida. 37. Penz, E. (2005). Researching the socio-cultural context: Putting social representations theory into action. International Marketing Review, 23(4), 418-437. 38. Pujar, S.M., Kamat, R.K., Bansode, S.Y., Kamat, R.R., & Katigennavar, S.H. (2008). Identifying and exploiting human needs for a people centric evolving knowledge society: A case study of Indian ICT Emergence. The International Information & Library Review, 40, 165-170. 39. Ramachandran, C. (2003). Information Technology and Social Development. Economic and Political Weekly, March 2229, 2003, 1192-1197. 40. Ratnadeep, V., & Hara, N. (2006). Community Information Capacity Building through Information Systems: A Conceptual Framework Based on Case Studies from India. AMCISAmericas Conference on Information Systems 2006 Proceedings. Paper 63. 41. Rogers, E.M. (1962). Diffusion of Innovation, 1st ed. New York: Free Press.

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LeanERP Mobile Platform Solution for Planning, Visualization and Execution of Business Operations in MSME units
K. Jayakumar ABSTRACT The paper presents the design and development of a solution framework for a LeanERP interactive application for use with a mobile handheld device, that enables profile based activity logging, planning and execution of tasks, information sharing, collaboration and decision support aligned with the enterprise operations. The utility of the LeanERP solution lies in its interactive intelligent cognitive features for dynamic visualization with trails and traceability of events, activities, analysis, estimates and computational models associated with various operations, presented in an engaging GUI framework with features alerting, prompting and eliciting responses from the users 1. Overview of the Solution Design The LeanERP solution is essentially designed to - present and capture information relating to various transactions at the point where it gets generated on a mobile handheld device, in an engaging GUI framework, adapted to the profile of the user. - communicate with the server to store such information in a database with details of the persons who transacted information, the characteristics of the process or transaction/ activity, time the transaction occurred and other transaction related information and - at any later point in time, generate the record relating to the transaction by reconstructing it on the fly from the database and rendering it on the handheld mobile device. The authorized user may invoke and generate the transactional record as an evidential document from the data base, rendered on the mobile device screen. The solution does not ordinarily have a document management system. However, images in the form of visual frames or video clips as are relevant, captured from surveillance cameras at strategic locations can also be associated and stored in the database for reconstruction of events or for the purpose of evidential records in future. The technology developed relies on ; - encoding of information logged by the user, discerning the pattern of interactions/ invocations and the parameters associated with it in the form of messages which are communicated to the server end computing environment - maturity and sophistication in the design of solution architecture at the server end computing environment that enables the user engage and participate meaningfully in the tasks that he is entrusted with in the enterprise. - Domain knowledge representation, process automation based on functional requirements and analytical models serving to process information and presenting it in various forms to the user on the basis of his interactions.

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LoginasMarketingManager>DecisionSupport>DemandForecasting SelectProcessMap

While a generic look and feel with organization of links is offered to every enterprise user, some of the widgets are displayed depending on the profile of the user and the operations he is responsible for. Notifications appear against the links indicating that actions are required to be performed by the user. The task panel when invoked presents a detailed view of the pending tasks requiring the attention of the user. 2. Significant Design Aspects 2.1 Reconstruction & Visualization of Transactions On the fly An illustrative list of some of the needs of MSMEs are traceability of costs, sequence of activity trails, pattern and predictions of market opportunities, manpower deployments, gaps in performance and productivity, impediments in production, impact of stockout, estimation of margins, economic value addition at various stages, computation of product costs, interventions required for quick turn around of cash flows, efficacy of distribution channels, decision whether to take up a given order and associated negotiation, articulation of contract provisions adapted to customer/ client profile. The LeanERP Solution framework enables visualization of these aspects in a form that enables comprehension of the underlying relationship between various elements and their inherent dynamics. Generation of patterns, establishing trails and traceability, drilled down features to present multiple configurations of information is the fundamental strength of the proposed solution.

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2.2 Role Centric Interactive visualization and Decision Support An enhanced feature of the solution architecture is that the interactive visualization capability for decision support on a mobile platform and the alignment of features with the roles and responsibilities of the user within the enterprise.

The dashboard enables the user get different views and perspectives of operations, activities or outcomes in keeping with his responsibilities. 2.3 Altering Software Structure and Behavior based on configuration parameters The emphasis is on a Rapid Prototyping approach where through an Agile Sprint & Scrum Model, the solution is rolled out iteratively adapted to the familiarization and build up on institutional capacity. Software structure and behavioral manifestation are altered through a set of parameters which can be set to adapt them to suit it to the requirements of the enterprise in question. Changes in workflows, definition of roles, allocation of work and such other enterprise behavior would be addressed with features that enable configuration of the application architecture to meet such change requirements. 2.4 User Engagement with elegant GUI with multiple Layout segments A comprehensive layout of GUI is presented to the user in multi-segment layout encompassing (i) interactive links panel, (ii) transaction panel and (iii) intelligent links for invocation of decision support & analytical models with cross functional links, context help on policies, guidelines, process maps and standard operation procedures. 2.5 Integrating Analytical Models and Business Intelligence Various analytical models are practiced to facilitate decision making in the context of demand management, inventory management, working capital and fund management, maintenance management, production planning & control, supply chain management, customer relations management, total quality management, performance management, life cycle approach, target costing, activity based costing and the like.

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2.6 Activity Logging & Reporting Logging of data related to any manufacturing or non-manufacturing activity can be concurrently happening along side visualization of reports. As data relating to production of items are being entered, the workers and supervisors get to know the past production figures over the week or over a month. 2.7 Service Oriented Architecture The solution design is based on a Service Oriented Architecture with capabilities for user invocation of services which are (a) progressively scalable with expanding features/services (b) usage driven with dynamic on the fly seamless integration and interoperability across functional modules and (c) presented in an intuitive engaging GUI with extensive use of messaging & alerts. A Schematic overview of the operations relating to various functional domains in an enterprise is shown in fig 1(a) to 1(c) below.
MATL REQUEST MATL REJECTS MATL INDENT PURCHASE RETURNS TENDER REQUEST MATERIAL MANAGEMENT TENDER RECEIPT QC ON GOODS RECD TENDER EVALUATION INV RECD/ PAYABLE ORDER PLACEMENT OVERDUE PAYMENTS ORDER ENQUIRY SALES / SERVICE REJECTS/ RETURNS STOCK OUT REPORT MATERIAL LEDGER RECEIPT OF PAYMENTS SALE/ SERVICE BOOKING/ AMENDMENT SALES & SERVICE ENQUIRY & LEADS SALES ADVOCACY & PROMOTION SALES DEMAND FORECAST SALES/ SERVICE MARGIN FIN GOODS INVENTORY GOODS RECD STORES WIP INVENTORY RAW MATERIAL INVENTORY ASSET REGISTER

SALES/ SERVICES PLAN

ORDER ACCEPTANCE PRODUCT SERVICES- COST & INVOICING SALES / SERVICES AGREEMENT

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Fig 1(a)

Schematic representation showing operations relating to Materials management, Stores and Sales

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Fig 1(b) Schematic representation showing operations relating to Human Resource Management and User Management

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Fig 1(c)

Schematic representation showing operations relating to Production Planning & Control, Maintenance, Costing & Financial Management and Analysis

3. Driving Business Value Though Diligent Enterprise Operations 3.1 Adaptive Profiling of Solution The development of the Solution framework was inspired by the need to engineer a design that enables prudent and diligent human actions and best practice for efficient Operations Management of MSME Units. The Framework enables rapid prototyping of the ERP solution adapted to various MSME profiles. A priori characterisation and profiling of MSME units are based on discerning distinguishing factors which determine business value, growth etc for a Cluster. These are validated on the basis of data and user interactions for further refinement specifically adapted for an MSME cluster. The solution is designed for shorter lead time & lesser scale of investments in the deployment of the systems that support decision making for efficient operations. Ingenious Solution Architecture and embedded hardware systems design at Server end - realizes capabilities to iteratively view results to discern impact of activities carried out, that encourage adoption. The links presented in the GUI enable interactive invocation of data/ visualization required for exercising control over various aspects of production and manufacturing of the products and services on handheld ipads & smart phones.

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The parameterized design of Solution & Data Driven Approach is facilitated with the use of analytical models and appropriate process design & process specifications for initiation of transactions with a given/ default apriori assumption which are later dynamically adapted with classifier systems that discern and fine tune the params on the basis of user interactions and data patterns. The User is also presented with menus in the configuration module to opt for different business solutions, specify desired, define pre-requisite conditions, consequent events, flows, behavior and associated business rules. 3.2 Performance Characteristics Analytical models are intended to be rendered as Embedded hardware implementations for parameterized solutions with associated mechanisms for their interfacing at the server end to help speed up the application. The human computing interface is presented with enriched characterization of problem space to engage the user with cues like information dashboards, event trigger indications, alerts, system states, exceptions, active warning systems, status displays, navigation aids, user tips, cross-references etc. The solution works with messaging & notifications to initiate transactions and for the progression of the transactions The solution leverages Robust Session Management to intuitively retain activity trails, attribute values, history of transactions to facilitate recall and iterative analysis prior to decision making and extensive use of buffers & data structures for storage of parameters and intermediate results.

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3.3 Value Propositions offered by LeanERP Solution The decision support that is required for MSME units concerns answers to questions which seek an answer to the distinguishing aspects that drives Business Value for the enterprise, improvements that are required in the Product Design features, the impact of doing or not doing an activity in terms of its impact on the business results, the options and scenario analysis for impacting on the reach, penetration or realization of returns for an enhanced rigor in Sales efforts, quality assurance, sensitivity analysis for the portfolio of service support extended by the enterprise, Customer preferences & market differentiation, determination of Price and considerations for negotiation and deciding on the terms of a given sale, awareness of new and unknown dimensions which are discerned on the basis of generated data. The Process characterization of manufacturing and related business operations integrates Activity Based Costing Methods. The Parameterized Design & Reconfigurable and reusable libraries enable adaptation of the solution for varying contexts. Re-Configurable flexibility is also presented for Role Profiling and defining the process flows customized to the needs of the enterprise.

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K. Jayakumar / LeanERP Mobile Platform Solution for Planning, Visualization and Execution of Business Operations in MSME units

The Software solution relies extensively on models, algorithms & analytics and user feedback to evolve and improve performance leveraging intelligent systems. References 1. K. Jayakumar Behavioral Prototyping of Clients for Adaptive Web Page Generation Using Neural Networks, Sixth Symposium on Intelligent systems of IEEE Bangalore Chapter, 20-21st November 1997 2. Ericsson, K. A., Charness, N., Feltovich, P. J., & Hoffman, R. R. (2006). The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance. New York: Cambridge University Press. 3. K. Jayakumar Process Mapping and Enterprise Solution framework to monitor Performance Behavior of systems for Effective Quality Assurance, Journal of Health and Medical Sciences Nov 2006 4. K. Jayakumar Cascading Excellence through Transformation. Management in Government JanMarch 2003. Vol 34 No 4. 5. K. Jayakumar Information Processing and eWorkflow in Organisations. Management in Government . Jan-Mar 2002. Vol 33 No 4. 6. K. Jayakumar and Vivek K. Agnihotri Quality Management : Electronic Workflows and eDelivery of Government Services, Management in Government. Oct-Dec 2001. Vol 33 No 3. 7. K.Jayakumar Framework for Exploring Active & AutonomouS Intervention Mechanisms for Managing Behavioural Dynamics of Complex Systems using Machine Learning -, 1st Conference on Systems & Management Innovation for R&D, 9 Oct 2009 NISCAIR Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, New Delhi 8. K.Jayakumar, Building Institutional capacities for a purposive transformative change to support eGovernance Initiatives WSIS e-GOV Forum, March 13, 2010, Geneva 309

Towards E-governance in the Cloud

9. 10.

11.

K. Jayakumar Dynamics of Organisational Transformation and Executing Change, CSIR publication, 2011 Dr K. Jayakumar Director General Consultancy Development Centre Enhancing Organizational Performance by Architecting Systems for Transacting Knowledge FIDIC 2011, Conference Davos, Switzerland 2-5 Oct 2011 K. Jayakumar Building and Leveraging Trust to pursue Organizational Mandates by Architecting Enterprise Systems for Evidence based Operations & Transacting Knowledge, International Congress of International Institute of Administrative Sciences Mrida, Yucatn Mexico, 18-22 June 2012

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Author Index
A
A. Basit Darem, 143 A.K.Somasekhar, 254 Abhishek Narain Singh, 81 AmarJeet Singh, 18 Amit Joshi, 135 Amitabh Ojha, 81 Amrutaunshu Nerurkar, 150 Ashwani Kush, 126 Asma Al-Hashmi, 143 Ayush Sharma, 176 K. Jayakumar , 301 Kapil Kant Kamal, 40 Hanumanthappa M, 62

G
Gopal Meena, 196 Gopal Sharma, 1

B
Balvir Singh Thakur, 18 Bindu N Natarajan, 278

Kavita Bhatia, 40

L
L.K. Das, 289

C
C.Pichandy, 226 Ch. Radhakumari, 238 Charru Malhotra, 289

Lansine Kaba, 217

M
M P Gupta, 81, 207 M.K.Mishra, 254

D
Daniel Phelps, 217 Deepak Chandra Misra, 29 Divakaran Liginlal, 217 DM Arvind Mallik, 72

M.R. Geetha Bala , 238 Mallamma V Reddy, 62 Manas Ranjan, 117 Manish Kumar, 40 Manish Mahant Manikpuri, 68 Mathiyalagan N., 162

311

N
N. Mathiyalagan, 185 Natchimuthu Munusamy, 226 Neeta Verma, 207 Nirav Shah, 150

S
Saket Gupta, 55 Samarth Arora, 283 Sandeep Kaur, 47 Sanjog Ray, 55 Sapna Choudhary, 68

P
P. Devika, 185 Pabitrananda Patnaik, 117 Pradeep Nair, 273 Praful Gharpure, 23 Prakash B R, 62 Prasanth Koothoor, 226

Senthil Priya .P, 162 Sharmila Devi Jaglan, 126 Subhash Chander Jaglan, 126 Suresha, 143 Susanta Kumar Panda, 117 Swapnil Shrivastava,264

T
T.Padmanabhan, 226 Tanmay Narang, 7

R
R.Jayaseelan, 226 Raghu Ramakrishnan, 1 Rajesh Chauhan, 18 Rajesh Narang, 7 Rama Hariharan, 29 Ranjan Kumar, 40

V
V. Ranga Rao, 96 V. M. Chariar, 289

Z
Zia Saquib, 264 Zia Saquib, 40

312