The Indian eGovernance Progress Card Story

e-Governance: Progress all around

IT spending by the Indian government increased 30 percent to reach Rs 6,934 crore in 2005-06. Some interesting projects are getting underway as part of the national e-governance plan. e-Governance as a phenomenon is undoubtedly on every IT vendor’s radar. By Faiz Askari



With the country set to grow at about nine percent in the coming years, bottlenecks in terms of regulations and delays associated with dealing with public agencies are increasingly in the spotlight. e-Governance has become synonymous with revamping public service delivery of services ranging from those targeted at the average citizen to those of interest to business and industry. To a large extent, the expectations from the industry and the citizen revolve around service delivery within pre refined time frames, doing away with excessive documentation, simplifying procedures, creating a single window or single point of contact for interfacing with multiple government agencies, and reducing interfaces with regulatory agencies with concomitant reduction in the scope for corruption.

R Chandrashekhar, Additional Secretary, Department of IT, Government of India says, “A sizeable number of successful pilots and some cases of full scale rollout of e-Governance projects in certain sectors have fuelled the imagination of the industry and the public with regard to the potential of e-Governance.”

Under pressure from the people to improve the delivery system, there is a sense of urgency even within the government to put appropriate systems for e-Governance in place. Chandrashekhar says, “In addition to the demand placed for improved delivery of services, the demands placed on the State with respect to enforcement and national security have also increased steeply over the last few years. A robust system for data analysis and decision-making are vital for combating money laundering, commercial frauds and threats to national security. On the other hand, a comprehensive and accurate citizens’ database is critical for ensuring that the benefits of various poverty alleviation and development schemes reach the deprived sections of the population with reduced leakage and increased accountability.”

The National e-Governance Plan, approved by Cabinet in May 2006, is a programme that weaves together 27 Mission Mode Projects and eight infrastructure and other support components that collectively address some of these demands of the business, citizens and the government.

The triple PPP model

Giving an insight into the importance of the public private partnership in taking e-Governance applications to the masses, Aruna Sunderajan, CEO, Community Service Centres says, “There is an immediate need for a public access network, I see this as one of the major challenges. ICT will be imperative in enabling rural and underserved communities through access to knowledge services.”

While highlighting the change in the government’s approach towards work, Sunderajan says, “India is facing an increased economic and social disparity. Even the government changed its focus on development this year, citing the example of the Planning Commission’s goal of ‘faster and more inclusive growth’. By leveraging ICT as a tool, the industry can play an instrumental role in the sustainable development of the nation through e-Governance.”

Industry perspective

From the IT industry perspective, the government segment has emerged as the fourth largest customer vertical after BFSI, telecom and manufacturing.

Chandrashekhar says, “The increased spends on e-Governance in the recent past have largely been limited to purchase of hardware and networking products and off-the-shelf system software. The coming three to four years are likely to see a shift towards delivery of e-Governance services. The IT industry will need to develop domain expertise in e-Governance in general along with specific aspects of project execution of relevance to the delivery of public services and maintenance of mission critical government systems.” With the emphasis of National e-Governance Plan on delivering services, adherence to committed service levels, and process reengineering, change management and capacity building within the government, there is considerable growth potential in the area of consulting for e-Governance.

George Paul executive vice president at HCL says, “India’s march towards adoption of e-Governance has been both steady and encouraging. We are happy to acknowledge the widespread realisation, across levels of departments in governments at the centre and state levels of the benefits of IT adoption in delivering better and efficient governance to the citizens.”

Read Full story: http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20070409/market01.shtml

PCs & Workstation

PCs-the great enabler

Increased IT adoption on account of a plethora of e-governance initiatives, both central and state, lower prices and rising demand from B and C class cities are some of the factors that are boosting PC sales. By Faiz Askari

The emergence of the SMB segment and the rapid growth of the PC market in class D and E cities were two talking points in 2006. The affordability of computers and the resultant boom in PC adoption has been the biggest change in the Indian PC market in recent times.

Princy Bhatnagar, GM, Transaction Brand, Lenovo India Pvt Ltd says, “The market is growing rapidly. People are becoming more demanding. We have received an excellent response to the new features or technologies introduced by us in the last year—the Jog Dial, Face Recognition and Dolby Home Theater.”

"PCs are acting as entertainment centres with TV functionality, supported by the digital sound experience and large screen displays"
- Princy BhatnagarGM, Transaction BrandLenovo India Pvt Ltd

With the price differential between a branded PC and an assembled one dwindling, brands have the edge now. Rajendra Kumar, Executive Vice President, HCL Infosystems Limited says, “The government’s policy on levies and duties has meant that organised players are able to offer PCs at a price that is comparable to PCs from local assemblers. In terms of content, the growing availability of broadband nationwide has also added thrust to the demand for PCs.”

MAIT found that 2.96 million PCs and notebooks were sold between April and September 2006, 19 percent more than in the same period during the last fiscal. Consumption of desktops grew by 8 percent. PC sales are projected to cross 6.5 million units in fiscal 2006-07.

India has one of the lowest PC penetration rates in the world at 18 per 1,000. Rajan Anandan, Vice President & General Manager, Dell India says, “In comparison China has 61 per 1,000, Brazil 142 per 1,000 and Russia 155 per 1,000. Although the industry sold an estimated 5.8 Million PCs in 2006, the size of the market remains relatively small when compared to China’s 22 Million plus.”

Complete Story:

http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20070326/anniversaryspecial07.shtml

Technology Feature

Voice over IP: Security issues to the fore

With the growing acceptance of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) in India, enterprises have changed their way of communicating within and outside the organisation. Enterprises in India, as well as those in the rest of the world, have successfully used this technology and derived cost savings and other benefits from it. VoIP has now been adopted universally as a reliable technology alternative by which voice is transmitted over a data network. While the acceptance level of VoIP has gone up, threats are looming large with voice spam being a significant blight on the horizon. Questions remain as to how a flood of voice spam will affect the market for VoIP and how vendors selling VoIP equipment are going to tackle this challenge. By Faiz Askari

It’s boom time for VoIP in India. Nagendra Venkaswamy, Managing Director (India & SAARC), Juniper Networks says, “India has the potential to be the world’s largest market after China, due to rising broadband penetration, a huge market and the importance placed on cost savings.”
Nagendra Venkaswamy

Agreeing to the fact that VoIP is growing rapidly in India, Jayesh Kotak, Vice-president, Marketing, D-Link India highlighted another aspect of the technology, “There is no doubt that VoIP is a growing segment. However, SMBs have not been able to benefit much from this technology. The government has allowed logical partitioning, but the benefits will only be widely enjoyed when VoIP is fully deregulated.”

Minhaj Zia, Business Development Manager, Cisco Systems India & SAARC explains, “The market for VoIP services in Asia, including Japan, will grow by $one billion per year between 2005 and 2009, topping $10 billion in 2009.”

The proliferation of VoIP services across Asia-Pacific will rise as telecommunications markets open up. According to the latest report by Frost & Sullivan, this move coupled with the increasing differential between PSTN (public switched telephone network) and VoIP tariffs will ignite VoIP services to revenue growth rates exceeding 320 percent y-o-y.

Complete Story: http://www.networkmagazineindia.com/200612/coverstory04.shtml