IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

She talks about the opportunities and challenges the technology offers

American Digital Communications giant Cisco offers many solutions driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning. Cisco India chief Daisy Chittilapilly talks about the opportunities and the challenges the technology offers. Excerpts from an interview.

"Presently the major beneficiaries of the e-governance projects outsourced by the Union and state governments are US companies like Microsoft, IBM and Oracle," ESC said in a statement.

"The ministry has invited international bids for chips. The Home Ministry also has a role to play to check the credentials of the companies as security is involved in it. Once it is done, the India Security Press would be able to finalise the design," Pardesi, a joint secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, said.

"Corruption is the biggest enemy of e-government," Tanmoy Chakrabarty, vice president of government industry solutions at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), told ZDNet Asia in a phone interview.

"It is projected that e-stamping facility will be effective in all the states over next three years," Chief Commissioner of Customs, Gujarat Zone, Lipika Majumdar Roy Choudhary said.

"Importance is being attached to e-stamping now after thrust on e-governance in the budget. It is a planned move forward, because just six states are offering the facility presently," she said, speaking at the CII organised function on budget analysis.

At the same time, India's exports of IT and IT-enabled services to Canada are worth just $600 million when India's total exports in this sector are worth $600 billion.

Pilot hopes to get Canadian and Indian businesses to explore both avenues to the fullest.

"The world used to think we are a land of snake charmers and black magic. But our youth has surprised the world with its IT skills," Mr Modi said, adding, "I dream of a digital India. It was once said railways connects India. Today I say IT connects India."

The CSI Lucknow Chapter chairman and principal consultant, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Jayant Krishna summarized this declaration in the form of 10 commandments of e-Governance in the Indian context comprising practical tips in the form of do’s & don’ts.

One of her tasks as administrator will be to oversee the implementation of the ₹25,000-crore Bharat Broadband scheme. “Perhaps this will be my biggest challenge in my career,” Sundararajan, currently managing director of the Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation and additional chief secretary in the Kerala Government, told BusinessLine.

Call drops are a familiar part of our lives. The internet still functions at snail’s pace despite lofty promises and colourful hoardings about speedy internet connectivity.

Leading the pack is Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) with its promise to connect India but cannot connect people in the same house.

A long standing customer of BSNL, R. Nongbri, says she finds it appalling that there is no mobile connectivity once she crosses Umiam and until she reaches Nongpoh. Then after crossing Nongpoh there is no connection until she reaches Byrnihat and that too is unstable.

At a time when the Ministry of Telecommunication is trying hard to build a “Digital India” and the country is talking about moving towards 5G internet connections, people in the country are still struggling to get a good data speed on their existing 4G connections.

According to a recent report published by world data speed monitoring platform Ookla, India ranks at 129th position in a list of 138 countries in terms of data speed. The average 4G internet speed in India is even lower than countries like Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

Buiilding trust between governments and citizens is fundamental to good governance. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been recognized as an essential tool for achieving the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by United Nations for the welfare of mankind. It is globally recognized that ICT promotes good governance. ICT can help build trust by enabling citizen engagement in the policy process, promoting open and accountable governance. Through e-governance, government services can be made available to citizens in a convenient, efficient and transparent manner. ICT can help in improving efficiency in mass processing tasks and public administration operations.

Today, it's most evident in the 'e' initiatives that the Indian government - one of the late up takers of technology - is taking to improve its functional and operational efficiency. The government has realised over the past few years - seeing the corporate world- that IT is one such tool that will benefit not just the people of the country but also increase transparency within its operations.

The next five to 10 years will be crucial to the information technology sector in India, as the country tries to expand its connectivity and access, according to Nasscom president Som Mittal.

Speaking to journalists at The Hindu recently, he said it was actually an advantage that India was “under-connected” and under-developed in technology. This could be leveraged as an advantage to leapfrog the current technologies falling into obsolescence.

Domain Names are entered in the address bar of the browser to access a website. This domain name provides a unique identity and on clicking on a given domain name, the webpage of the particular website opens up.

In India, states such as Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Uttaranchal are in the forefront in adopting Linux-based solutions for their e-governance projects.

In order to ensure transparency and efficiency, the government has mandated the use of open source software (OSS) in all e-governance systems implemented by various government organisations. In an interaction, Amarjeet Manchanda tells Shubhendu Parth how Red Hat India is propogating the adoption of OSS among various government agencies to deliver citizen-centric services. Excerpts.

Q: India is planning to launch open source operating system – Bharat Operating System Solutions or BOSS. What role is Red Hat playing in this?

Red Hat has been working very closely with various government agencies in India to propagate the adoption of open source software (OSS) for citizen-centric services and e-governance initiatives. This strong collaboration resulted in successful adoption of OSS and Red Hat technologies in government projects like UIDAI, CRIS, land records and MyGov. The engineering level collaboration between Red Hat, NIC and CDAC has also helped in overcoming the language barrier for IT adoption by introducing 20+ Indian local language support across OS and LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Python/Perl) Stack. We will continue to collaborate with the agencies for adoption of newer OSS innovations.

In Smart City solutions, NEC Corporation India stands out with its range of solutions. NEC India has been at the forefront of the SCM with cutting-edge technologies – from AI and Face Recognition to Public Safety and Biometrics.

In a freewheeling conversation with Voice & Data Aalok Kumar, President, and CEO of NEC Corporation India shares interesting aspects of the Smart City implementations done by his company.