Rama Krushna Das

Adoption of Cloud Computing in e-Governance

Cloud is a model or architecture and a new paradigm of computing with SOA as its base architecture. Cloud Computing has evolved as a key computing platform for sharing resources that include infrastructures, software, applications, and business processes. e-Governance plays a vital role in any organization and clouds with different layers are helpful to the e-Governance services. Cloud has different services, which are integrated and reused. As e-Governance is using distributed services, which requires a lot of infrastructure. Cloud services are helpful to reduce the cost of infrastructure and software cost. This paper describes how to adopt cloud computing in e-Governance applications to reduce infrastructure, and platform cost, to increase network security, to increase scalability and quick implementation.

CRHIS: cloud based rural healthcare information system

Healthcare in developing countries has always been a major issue. In the Indian subcontinent the healthcare facilities are quite diverse as one travels from major cities to remote locations and to the rural areas. Whatever little healthcare has been possible in rural India is only because of the initiative of the Government or NGOs. No private player is interested to invest in the rural areas because of the possible poor return on investment. In this paper we study how modern ICT in general and cloud computing in particular can be used in the healthcare sector in order to facilitate improved medical services in the rural areas at reduced costs. We argue that cloud services stand as a potential alternative to facilitate rural healthcare information management in terms of cost reduction and resource utilization. At the same time it can improve maintainability and use of up-to-date technologies in the healthcare sector. The main objective of a Cloud based information system is to create secure and state-of-the-art facility to store patient data which can be accessed by the medical professionals and policy makers for disease diagnosis and control. A cloud based information repository system can offer new possibilities, such as easy and ubiquitous access to medical data, and opportunities to utilize the services of medical experts which are otherwise unavailable in rural areas. Here, we propose a cloud based model for building a rural healthcare information system. Design of an overall system along with the functional components is presented and the advantages, open issues and prospects for further improvement of this model is also highlighted.

SOA for e-governance in India: potentials and pitfalls

In recent times, e-Governance is being widely encouraged both by the provincial as well as the federal Government of India for bringing Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsive and Transparent (SMART) governance. As a consequence several e-governance projects have been undertaken encompassing a wide range of governmental functions. While an attempt is being made to provide transparent, scalable, manageable and easily accessible services, this has led to some of the major concerns, like integration of such projects, interoperability among the services, and reusability of services. The Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) which has proven successful in building large, distributed heterogeneous systems has the potential to provide architectural support to develop e-governance solutions by integrating independent services developed and controlled by respective owners with their varied goals and parameters. In this paper we share our experience of using SOA in typical Government to Citizen (G2C) services provided through different e-Governance projects, like the Municipality Computerization project and the Common Service Centre (CSC) project. In the sequel we highlight the benefits and pitfalls in adopting SOA as an enabling technological framework for such e-Governance projects in India.

e-governance and digital inclusion: creating smart rural women in India

E-Governance in India is fast progressing to the era of digital opportunities. Digital opportunities in India have shown the paths of collaborative governance and mission 2007 recognizes the role of women to be more important. Role of women in overall development of society needs no debate. In India, women who constitute almost half of the population are integral part of overall development of the nation and policies are abundant to support the cause though a lot is still needed to be accomplished. One of the major challenges at the hands of policy makers and implementers is to empower the women and especially in rural India. Rural India is still under the grip of digital divides, though overall India as a nation has shown the promises of digital inclusion and digital opportunities. However, these opportunities are yet to have its outreach in rural areas. National Informatics Centre, a national agency in India is striving towards supporting the digital inclusion strategies of India with active deployment of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) enabled services. In this paper, it is argued that digital inclusion outreach is better achieved through collaborative and group based approaches and thus Women Self-Help Groups (WSHGs) show these promises. This paper presents the success story of some women WSHGs in Ganjam district of Odisha province by introducing web-based applications for better dissemination of information regarding their products and performance.

Citizen participation in rural e-governance: a case study in the Indian context

Today developing countries are confronted with two major challenges -- on one hand the pressing need to catch up with the international standards and on the other to address the basic needs of the citizens. While the first can be achieved through policy planning and technology adoption, the later can only be possible through citizen participation. In India the last two decade has witnessed a phenomenal change with the initiative taken by implementing many e-Governance projects. Interestingly many of the projects have targeted the rural community. But the irony is that the people living in the rural areas are least involved during conceptualization and planning of different rural projects resulting in difficulties at the time of implementation. In this paper, we discuss how the participation of the citizens was actually useful in the successful implementation of a specific rural project in India, namely, the NREGS. Further, we also share how continuing participation of the rural community was not only helpful in monitoring the execution of the project but also to provide feedback to the Government for better implementation and to ensure transparency.

Monitoring of service based e-governance systems

In recent years web services seems to provide a solution towards interoperability both at the organizational and application level. It is possible to integrate inter-related tasks of different organizations through service composition techniques to form single service based applications. However, as government organizations function autonomously it is necessary to monitor these service based systems (SBS) at run-time. Monitoring SBS in a non-intrusive and composition platform independent manner is a real challenge. In this paper, we propose a framework for monitoring the compliance of SBS for which a set of requirements have been pre-specified. A Monitor Specification Language has been developed to specify the properties of the system to be monitored at run-time. The monitoring framework has been applied to a government document verification scenario as proof of concepts.

An e-governance project monitoring initiative in India: a case study of e-procurement

In this paper, we have discussed various challenges faced during the implementation and monitoring of the GePNIC (Government e-Procurement System of National Informatics Centre) project in the Orissa province of India. We also present the steps taken to overcome the difficulties by adopting suitable techniques for process reengineering and change management leading to the successful implementation of the project.

Smart city and E-Governance: Exploring the connect in the context of local development in India

Smart governance was the buzz word when E-Gov 1.0 was lunched with lot of emphasis on citizen charters and citizen led governance systems in India. The concept of smart city with E-Gov 2.0 in India has provided the impetus to bring in holistic approach to the local development in a city. Globally, smart cities have come up and providing best of the amenities to local people in urban set up, is quite challenging. In Indian context role of E-Governance is quite essential and logical. While E-Governance supports the idea of citizen centered service orientation, local development issues in a smart city is also citizen centered. In this paper connect between the concept of smart city and its link with E-Governance is explored through a developed architectural framework.

Accessibility of e-governance in rural India: a critical view point

e-Governance has been embraced by almost all the countries which aim at modernizing public administration by trying to improve information and service delivery, and making government more accountable, transparent, responsive and effective. In a country like India, though there has been a political will for the successful implementation of e-Governance but accessibility of e-Governance in rural India has been a daunting task. Rural India constitutes a major portion of the country to be covered under the e-Governance mission plan. But, due to disadvantaged geographical positioning most of the rural areas are either inaccessible or poorly connected as far as ICT is concerned. As a result, people living in such areas have little access to many of the e-Governance services. Besides this, due to lack of education and inability to cope with ICT, the rural mass has lagged behind their urban counterparts in taking advantage of e-Governance services. In this paper, we analyze the factors that have an impact on the accessibility of e-Governance services, especially in rural India. This study can provide an insight into the actual requirements of the marginalized section of the society which must be suitably addressed in order to improve their accessibility to different ICT enabled services, thereby help achieving the mandate of inclusive e-Governance.

Managing innovations in rural e-governance services: a case of MGNREGS in India

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) focuses on supporting income of Below Poverty Line (BPL) citizens in India. Its outreach across Indian states and among the population having diverse employment challenges in rural India has made the scheme more complex. Role of e-Governance has been quite beneficial in ensuring transparency, accountability and empowering rural citizens to exercise their rights. This has been possible through innovations in e-Governance services that involve complex federal and democratic structure of government systems. In this paper we discuss the issues related to innovations in services, and restructuring the processes while embedding citizen interests. This paper illustrates role of e-Governance in successfully planning, designing and implementing innovations for effective deliveries of MGNREGS services with multi-dimensional effects on sustainable development in a country like India.