Possible e-Governance Manifesto for Delhi Elections

People-centric e-Governance

Reduce Discretionary Power, Reduce Corruption

·      No scheme or regulation without e-governance to support the implementation

·      Analytics driven policy making to avoid biases due to vote-bank politics

·      All government files will be created and managed online, with all file notings kept public

·      Maintaining corruption heat-map by department online, based on SMS  feedback from citizens

Many regulations and schemes are passed without much intention of actually implementing them properly on ground. The outcome of such regulations and schemes is that the benefit rarely reaches the intended sections of the society and is usurped by middlemen and corrupt politicians.

It is therefore imperative to implement e-governance solutions for every new scheme and for every new regulation, such that the targeted sections of the society get benefited.

Hence, if regularization of colonies is done, it should be preceded by a system of identifying all existing residents and publishing their information online, along with maps of what they own and their photographs. This would ensure that their rights are safeguarded such that land-mafia, supported by corrupt politicians, does not usurp the newly regularized properties from these underprivileged sections of the society.

Similarly, data analytics will be used to determine policies such as the usefulness of the BRT, discriminatory and monopolistic power tariffs, effectiveness of government schools etc.

Governance

Day to Day Functioning

Many government decisions are taken, hidden from public scrutiny. The decisions and the files are kept away from the public and the rationale for taking the decisions are never discussed in public.

From petty decisions that inconvenience the public, such as replacing perfectly good paving stones every 6-7 months without any reason, and the old paving stones being left behind carelessly on the road, leading to accidents, especially of 2-wheelers, are matters of criminal negligence.

To prevent such arbitrary decision making, Delhi Government should put all working files online, along with the file notings.

Delhi government should also put up a website for reporting arbitrary civil works such as re-paving perfectly fine roads, replacing paving stones, digging up newly laid roads, water not available, unauthorized constructions, squatting on pavements etc. Each complaint will be tracked with a complaint number and will be brought to a logical conclusion.

Corruption Heatmap

Very often, some departments are known to have significantly higher corruption levels. Each department and its offices will be given code that will be prominently displayed at that office. Citizens who believe the department to be corrupt and/or had a corrupt office to deal with, can send an SMS with the department code to a certain number.

Departments with the highest such SMS’s will be marked with red and those with the lowest such SMS’s will be marked in green and other departments that fall in between will have a shade of colour between red and green, depending on the number of complaint SMS’s that come in.

Such a system will help in reducing the overall corruption envelope of governance.

Police and Security

Security of Women and safeguards from police excesses

The weaker sections of the society are the ones who are worst affected by poor security and poor policing. In many cases, the citizens are more afraid of the police.

Therefore Delhi needs to bring the following two key systems:

·           Create a Pre-FIR system where citizens can enter their police complaint from any cybercafé or smartphone and would then merely need to go to the police station to convert the pre-FIR into either a formal complaint or an FIR, based on whether the offence is cognizable or non-cognizable. This would reduce the harassment of ordinary citizens who faces trivial issues such as reporting of lost phones, reporting of road accidents etc and who have to end up being in a police station for hours

·           The statistics of how many pre-FIR’s are converted into FIR or complaints would give an indication of the responsiveness of the police, especially for the weaker sections of the society.

·           Create a system by which a low-cost electronic device can be worn by women that can be triggered to alert a special rapid force to respond to the help requested by the woman.

·           The special rapid force will be provided by a helicopter for effective response and for even following moving vehicles if necessary

·           GPS-tag all known sexual offenders and violent criminals so that women and children can find if they are in the proximity so such offenders

·           Similar systems will be provided to household help who can report abuses by their employers through such systems.

Make Delhi a Safe Delhi, a Vibrant Delhi

Free Business and Educational Software and Cloud Computing

To support small businesses and students

We all know that technology is critical for the success of businesses. However, the software and computer costs are prohibitively high for such businesses.

Delhi Government should provide Free and Open Source software to such small businesses to make them competitive and give them access to public computing resources to reduce their hardware costs.

Similar Free and Open Source software will be provided to students to help them be prepared for the jobs that demand basic knowledge of computers

e-Benefits

Panel Discussion on e-Benefits at GovernanceNow

http://govnext.in/speaker.php?speaker_id=173

Focus on outcome is absolutely necessary


ICT can help implement social welfare schemes in many ways. Today it is required in almost all sectors of social system like health – reserving 25 percent beds for the people from economically weaker section, to check if they actually get the bed or if it is used at all. Other social sectors include education. We must also ensure that if human resource mapping is happening. Then there is food security, ensuring if  food through public distribution system (PDS) is reaching the beneficiary. If people do not have food security, there will be no social welfare. Then there is cash transfer system for pension and scholarship. These all are part of social welfare schemes.

Role of middlemen and leakages in the delivery system are major challenges in the implementation of these schemes. However, IT can be used to overcome these challenges to a large extent. We need to develop models which can support such schemes. We need to find people who will be involved in it and we will have to see if they have been trained properly.
Where are technological models, or the larger business models? We have to work on solutions like installing screen readers for illiterate people or many such differently-abled people.

We need to find solutions – both technological and financial. Such models need to be put in place and we also have to ensure if outcomes are really been delivered. The focus on outcome is absolutely necessary. Focus should also be given to beneficiaries and to ensure that leakages are stopped. ICT can play an important role here.

The good part is that the problem has been recognised and the vision has been laid out. Now we need to develop a system which can proactively recognise beneficiaries, which can actively check further leakages. For affordability, we must have a say in some core technologies as well.

Concept of Digital Colonization introduced to the Malaysian Government

Concept of Digital Colonization introduced to the Malaysian Government

Technological Sovereignty Revisited

Published in eGov Magazine

Details of related event at http://c-dep.blogspot.in/2013/11/national-conclave-on-technological.html

Technological Sovereignty

Dr Jaijit Bhattacharya
President, Centre for Digital Economy Policy Research;

Sovereignty is one of the cornerstones for ensuring the security of the country and ensures that India as a nation can stand up to pressures from other nations. Sovereignty is critical to ensure our economic independence. As India moves into occupying the space of an IT superpower, the ability of the ICT industry to provide the requisite technologies reliably to the military, needs to be significantly enhanced. The issue is compounded with the fact that India has a feeble presence at the high stake tables of IT standards. IT standards have become one of the preferred tools of developed economies to extract undue economic benefit from emerging economies. Given that India, as of now, appears to have limited presence presence at the global forums on international IT standards, we appear to be abdicating our responsibility to secure our IT industry as well as IT usage. This situation has very deep implications on our defence preparedness.

The Strategic Implications With the lack of control over the technological layers, defense institutions will be challenged to protect the nation from Cyberwarfare. More importantly, military hardware itself could be subject to intrusions and control by adversaries, thanks to the increased “intelligence” of the equipment.

Given that tactical thrusts on the ground need to be backed up with complex supply chain which are increasingly dependent on critical information infrastructure such as Railways Signaling, telecommunications network etc, the entire Military strategy could be threatened by compromising the critical information infrastructure which has non-authenticated ICT components.

With the same “ICT intrusions”, the Financial Infrastructure of the country can be brought down, impacting the ability of the military to sustain a conventional warfare.

The impact on Network Centric Warfare is also obvious.

Thus it is imperative that we move towards an ICT & Electronics and Cyber (ICT&CE) ecosystem profile which provides greater control over the ICT layers to the military strategists.

The Tactical Implications
The tactical implication of lack of Technological Sovereignty on ICT is even more severe. The saying that “but for a nail, the war was lost” holds absolutely true for role of ICT in tactical engagements.

Compromising the supply-chain, command and control systems, financial systems, Operational Control systems will have devastating tactical implications, arising out of not having control over the ICT layers.

Industrial Ecosystem
A military can be as strong as the industrial ecosystem that backs it up.

In the modern warfare, ICT industrial ecosystem plays a critical role to ensure continuous supply of the latest ICT tools to support defense preparedness.

It is quite questionable whether India’s ICT Industrial Ecosystem has the wherewithal to provide uncompromised ICT tools to the military. This issues needs to be addressed through systematic policymaking and through carefully crafted institutional mechanisms.

Way Forward
India is growing as an economy and as an IT superpower. However, from a defense pre-paredness perspective, one is suspect of the layers of ICT&EC going into the ecosystem and the purposes for which these layers are actually operating.

India has limited sovereignty over these layers of ICT&EC that are going into defense preparedness. It is imperative to address this lacuna. India has the potential to develop the critical technologies and provide the technological sovereignty required to have credible defense preparedness.

One of the policies that may be leveraged to develop Technological Sovereignty is the defence offset clause. Under the current procurement
norms, India has a policy for 30% offset on defence procurement. This creates an immense opportunity for domestic manufacturers and service providers. More importantly, this also creates an opportunity for developing domestic IPR to take benefit of the 30% defence offset policy. However, in order to do so, it is critical to identify the roadblocks that prevent domestic manufacturers from tapping this enormous market, which also includes a fickle tax regime that prevents having a long-term view of the market. It would also involve identification of institutional mechanisms to facilitate partnerships of global military ICT providers with domestics manufacturers to enable the procurement process The first step in this process would be the identification of institutional mechanisms to facilitate domestic entrepreneurship.

However, such a step would require conceptualization of facilitating policies and institutional mechanisms to accelerate the process of Technological Sovereignty in ICT&EC for Strategic purposes.

Service Oriented Administration (SOA) and Next Generation of Land Records

India has been vigorously adopting an ambitious e-governance programme for over a decade now. The focus of many of the e-governance programs is to increase government tax revenues and to reduce cost of governance.

Given that governments have a monopoly over large amounts of data and information, and given the advances made in ICT adoption, there is an opportunity for the government to add to its sources of revenues significantly by moving to a paradigm of “Service Oriented Administration” or SOA. The monopoly of the data owned by the government can help the government, in collaboration with private sector partners to, provide such services to the citizens that were hitherto impossible to provide and for whom there is no equivalence in the existing brick and mortar setup of the government.

There are many such services that could be provided through the concept of “Service Oriented Administration” or SOA, that would lead to significant increase in government revenue as well as enhance economic activity in the country.

One of the first such SOA initiatives that would arguably have the highest impact on the citizens could be Next Generation of Land Records that could be implemented through a Land and Property Exchange System (LAPEX). The basic concept of such an exchange is that if stocks worth crores of rupees could be traded online with absolute security and privacy, why we can not trade land and property through a similar online system. Of course, the analogy between stocks and land is not the most straight forward, given the complexities involved in land and property records management. However, these differences are not insurmountable. An online Land and Property Exchange would open up the land and property market by bringing greater liquidity through enhanced visibility to available properties and greater visibility to potential buyers.

It is a well known fact based on many a studies that any improvement in land and property management would have a significant impact on the GDP of the country. A LAPEX would bring in enormous efficiencies in the system and would be a win-win proposition for all stakeholders. States such as Karnataka, which already have a highly evolved set of land and property management systems in place, are well poised to take this next step. Such an initiative would allow citizens to buy and sell land and property online. Given that Government of India has facilitated the setting up of Common Service Centers (CSC’s) in rural India, the benefits of a LAPEX will be highly pronounced in the rural areas where rural citizens can trade in land on the LAPEX through the CSC’s.

Government of Karnataka already has finely crafted IT systems for managing the current process of land and property management. This starts from the ‘Mojini’ computerized system for managing pre-mutation property sketches in rural areas and UPOR ( Urban property ownership records) for managing property ownership records ( along with it’s map) in urban areas, to ‘Kaveri’ for managing the deed registration and stamp duty collection, to the internationally acclaimed ‘Bhoomi’ for effecting the mutation of the property. Given this strong base and given that a considerable number of records are already “cleaned up”, it is an incremental step to setup LAPEX. Such an exchange could be setup on a public-private partnership basis with no investment from the government and with the potential to earn hundreds of crores for the government through the service charge levied from the citizens.

The system would be an optional system, wherein citizens can use the traditional mechanism of land and property dealings or could use the LAPEX, where they can divide their property, find a buyer or seller, register their sale deed and perform the mutation with only a single visit required to the government office at the end of the entire process. Moreover, pre-mutation sketches and Record of Rights can now be kept in a secure, authenticated and digitally signed format in a USB drive and can be traded 24X7.

In addition, it is also important for the government to grant (a) apriori right to owners to sell properties where government has no objections, (b) apriori right to buy to citizens who qualify to buy under the government rules and regulations such as eligibility to buy agricultural property and (c) automatic mutation of property after a certain waiting period. Such granting of apriori rights would make investors more comfortable and would open up the land market and thus result in additional 1.2 % increase in GDP (pl quote mechanize report)

Adopting the above process changes would result in emergence of a property record system which would make it reasonably easy for transition to  the Torrens Title System or more popularly called as a the Title based system as compared to the current Deed based system that involves registration of deeds and the need to have a chain of authentic deeds to prove ownership of a property. t. The proposed LAPEX would virtually create the Central Registry of clean property records which is one of the important component of title based system proposed by  Robert Torrens as part of the Torrens Title System.  The transition to the title system, as and when the land laws are amended to provide for the same, would be fast and less painful, thanks to the LATEX coupled with new processes proposed in Karnataka , which would create cleaner property records.

LAPEX along with the above process change from the government would create an explosion of land and property traded in the state. This will also lead to an enormous increase in the value of land and property in the state, thus significantly increasing the state GDP.

The time is opportune for the government to move into the next gear of e-governance adoption and for moving into the paradigm of Service Oriented Administration. India is a leader in IT and by adopting SOA, India can also be a thought leader in e-governance. Such a step would not only increase the revenues of the Government and benefit the citizens, but it would also help industry by allowing them to transparently buy large tracts of land for industrial and infrastructure projects. It would also help the IT industry in “exporting” the service to other countries in the world. Given the complexities of land and property management and given the criticality of land for infrastructure development of the nation, LAPEX is absolutely essential for faster growth of the nation.

Views on NDTV on possible curbs on Social Media by Election Commission of India

Views on National Digital Literacy Mission

http://www.hindustantimes.com/photos-news/Photos-Business/digitalliteracy/Article4-917769.aspx

Views on NDTV on Aadhar and iPhone Biometrics

http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/the-social-network/aadhaar-to-iphone-biometrics-gone-wrong/291885

Views expressed on NDTV on Police Snooping on Cyberworld

http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/the-social-network/now-delhi-police-out-to-snoop-social-media/294677?hp

Recommended IT Driven reforms in property ownership for unleashing an accelerated economic growth

(Proceedings from a talk given at an eGov conference)

http://www.upor.karnataka.gov.in/Newfolder/News7.aspx

http://egov.eletsonline.com/2011/09/land-reform-system-in-karnataka/

The principle of Keynesian economics and free market that information can be freely available is not valid in case of land and property in India

The issues of urban governance were highlighted with the case study of Karnataka where multiple urban systems have already been implemented. Technology is opening up new models of governance including new business models for government, operational model, technological model and financial models which are leading to participatory governance.

One such area where these models are used is in land records. Increase in efficiency of land and property records will have considerable impact on GDP of the country. Primary source of income in rural areas continues to be agriculture. Some issues of land and property transactions are that it is broker driven, there are significant brokerages and manipulations because there is no transparency of information. There is non transparent market, distress sale and purchase which also lead to manipulation of prices. There is very limited liquidity and it is difficult to encash particular wealth. Finally we have deed based system rather than title based system which means that property can be sold multiple times based on deeds. In Karnataka, land records are kept in a dead language which need to be preserved as new deeds have no value unless the trail of deeds are maintained. Globally, people are moving towards title based system which is if the land is in a person’s name he owns it irrespective of what the previous deeds are. Between the time of registration and actual mutation, the land could be sold to many people as the registration system does not go and check whether property is sold or not. Registration and mutation are independent.

There is Sarfaesi Act which keeps track of all assets for which loan has been taken. It ensures that new urban property follows the system because much of the old properties are embroiled in the issue of whether the deed is clean or not, whether there are competing claims on land, and so on.

In Karnataka, land property records and management system works by three sections. One is land records which is responsible for managing ownership and rights, ownership records of non- agricultural land and property. Second is registration section which is registering all transactions taking place in land and property in public record. Third is service section which is managing spatial and non spatial data about land.

There are two kinds of properties- agricultural and non agricultural urban property. For rural property, the owner needs to request for a pre mutation sketch (PMS) before it can be sold and registered in the registration system, Kaveri. Kaveri manages the registration taxes. After registering in the Kaveri system, the transaction needs to be entered in the Bhoomi system where the mutation is recorded. Essentially, the four major steps are: agreement to sell is reached without the sale deed; the seller and buyer get together through a broker; pre mutation sketch is made; the sale deed along with the PMS is then brought for registration and thereafter mutation system. This entire process can potentially be converted to an online system, thereby cleaning up the records and therefore increasing the value of the property.

There is significant pressure on the legal infrastructure because of large number of civil cases that  are based on land records. As per one estimate, 70 percent of cases in Indian courts are related to land and property issues. The Bhoomi project and related reforms improved the quality of land records. But it is still built on a foundation which is very archaic, laid down by the British, focusing more on revenue collection than in providing governance. Therefore, land and property transactions continue to be a significant source of litigation in courts.

It also has significant socio- economic impacts. The sub-optimally governed land and property system leads to considerable hardships for rural and urban citizens. Moreover, it leads to family disputes and impacts the well being of the citizens. Support system is critical to facilitate land acquisition system for developmental projects at appropriate rates and compensations.

At the end of the day, the benefits are that one gets service/tax oriented administration. If government starts looking for providing services and getting revenue enhancements because of the service provided, that would increase the revenue collected by the government. As the transaction hassles goes down, the number of transaction goes up and in turn tax and revenue collection goes up significantly. At high level we need to train people, legislative and administrative changes, and training of owners, how to manage digital signatures and digital ownership of land.

The major legislative changes that are required are three rights that government should grant- (a) apriory right to sell for owners to sell their property without any objections; (b) right to buy for potential buyers to qualify on terms such as eligibility to buy agricultural property ; and (c) automatic mutation of property after a certain period.

Where to buy the books authored by Jaijit Bhattcharya

http://www.amazon.com/Gov-2-0-Policies-Processes-Technologies/dp/0070680175

http://books.google.co.in/books?id=oEUSihe0LwwC&source=gbs_similarbooks

http://books.google.co.in/books?id=0BIJ69iZyZ0C&lpg=PR2&pg=PR2#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://books.google.co.in/books?id=WveCLT4XLzQC&lpg=PR2&pg=PR2#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://www.flipkart.com/technology-government-1-e-hb/p/itmdyv7yyq77ergk?pid=9788190339742&query=8190339745

http://www.infibeam.com/Books/info/ik-international-pvt-ltd/technology-government/9788190339742.html

http://books.google.co.in/books/about/e_Gov_2_0_Policies_Processes_and_Technol.html?id=WveCLT4XLzQC&redir_esc=y

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/author/jaijit-bhattacharya/page-1/

Views on NDTV on Fingerprint detection in Smartphones

Views on NDTV on Fingerprint detection in Smartphones

Written with Saruabh Singh and Parminder Singh

Compulsory Registration Order 2012

 

Around the world information and communication technology (ICT) is enabling governments and businesses to improve productivity, quality of life, and communication. In a world driven by innovative technologies, it is the growing consumption of electronic products that is enhancing the reach of ICT.  India alone is expected to consume USD 400 billion worth of ICT products annually by 2020 with three-quarters of this demand expected to be met by imports.

While electronic products help take technology to the masses, their increasing presence in our lives has caught the attention of governments and think-tanks that are initiating discussions and pushing for  appropriate policy ecosystem to ensure that consumers get access to safe and good quality technology products.

The Indian government too has been taking positive steps in the interest of the safety of consumers. Government of India has notified the Electronics and Information Technology Goods (Requirements for Compulsory Registration) Order in October, 2012. The Order, which is applicable to manufactured as well as imported IT goods, mandates safety testing and certification of 15 categories of information technology (IT) products by Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) accredited labs. The BIS registration scheme is also expected to strengthen electronics testing and certification infrastructure in India.

However, given the vast scope of products covered under the scheme, the implementation of the Order faces several challenges. The biggest challenge facing the immediate implementation of the Order is the inadequate in-country testing infrastructure. At the moment there are only six BIS accredited labs with a monthly capacity to test fewer than 400 products, while there is a demand for more than 8000 products to be tested each month.

Government of India has acknowledged the enormity of the registration exercise and in a welcome move extended the compliance deadline of April 3, 2013 by three months. The extension of the deadline is an opportunity for the government and industry in India to come together for smoother implementation of the Order. To comply with the Order, several aspects of it need to be clarified, and in this respect IT manufacturers and importers need further support from the government.  

Another major challenge is the coverage of “Highly Specialized Equipment” (HSE), including large industrial printers, servers, and storage in the scope of the Order. Destructively testing millions of dollar worth of equipment that have annual sales of a few units will make them economically infeasible to be sold in the Indian market. This will deprive the commercial consumers the access to the latest technology with a serious possibility that the manufacturers will altogether withdraw these products from the Indian market.

The testing of specialized products under this Order is not a practical option also because they are used in controlled environment by trained professionals who are well-versed with procedures to manage and mitigate security risks of the equipment.  Such commercial equipment that is not a threat to mass consumer safety could be covered under separate standards such as the Machinery Directive of the European Union, which considers such equipment as industrial machinery.

Yet another implementation related concern is the inclusion of warranty replacement units in the scope of the Order. In this respect the manufacturers’ inability to safety-test discontinued units will severely impact their ability to fulfill warranty obligations, leading to significant consumer dissatisfaction.

There are also various other implementation issues ranging from series formulation, and product coverage, to labeling that require further clarification and consultations with the industry. In the absence of a well drafted process, compliance with the regulation will be irregular and chaotic.

The Indian regulatory environment needs to ensure the safety of the electronic and IT products while facilitating business growth and investment into the country. It can be clearly foreseen that if the industry and government do not work together to resolve some of the large implementation bottlenecks, the Rs 70,000 Cr IT and electronics industry in India will be negatively impacted in the coming months.

To ensure hassle free implementation with the Order, as well as to work towards the establishment of mechanisms that guarantee safe IT and electronic products, government and industry need to increasingly collaborate. An increased industry consultation through regular technical committee meetings is necessary to overcome the prevailing challenges in the implementation of the Order. We hope that the government and industry will work together to make this transition a success for the growing number of Indian ICT consumers.

 

Neccessity of e-Records for India

India has a rich heritage of culture expressed in manuscripts, folk songs, paintings, classical dances, classical music, stories, sculptures etc. However, with modernization, we are loosing them at a very rapid rate. Very soon, we will loose the unparalleled rich heritage that we have inherited.

The loss is happening not just because of physical deterioration but also because we do not have Digital Sovereignty and hence records that are kept in electronic form are also being lost as there is no holistic approach or vision to maintaining these records. As an example, precious recordings of renditions by Gangubhai Hangal when she was 19 years old are lost as there are no machines that can read the tapes on which the recording was done.

Our citizens face daily problems with regards to their own records provided by the government and government agencies. Governments themselves regularly ask the hapless citizen to bring documents such as caste certificate or birth certificates or even educational certificates that have been given by the government itself. We feel that it is bad governance if the government itself does not have the documents that it issued to the citizens and thus harass the citizens. It also leads to fraud as paper documents can be forged leading to further degeneration of governance.

Such risk of frauds also push up the borrowing rates for capital for purchasing income generating assets such as trucks and tractors as banks are not sure if the same asset is being hypothecated with multiple banks.

We therefore propose to digitize all government records, government provided documents and capture the Indian heritage digitally in formats that do not compromise our digital sovereignty. All land records and property records will be made available on click of a button, thus reducing property related civil cases that clog our courts. All citizen records, including birth records, deatch records, marriage and caste certificates will be made available online. Caste certificates will be issued automatically based on the caste of the parents. All educational degrees will be kept online for verification and authentication.

The National Manuscripts Mission, that was launched by the Government almost a decade ago, needs to be implemented vigorously with digital archiving standards that are not controlled by foreign companies but are universally shared. A similar mission will be launched for protecting the invaluable intangible heritage of India, expressed through music, oral history, folk arts etc.

And to set up a Central Electronic Registry to track all income generating movable and immovable assets in order to make it easy to get loans to purchase such assets.

And so in India in future, no government department will harass a citizen by asking the citizen to bring the ownership documents of land for a loan, or to bring educational certificates, or caste certificate or passport as the government itself will have it as e-records. And it will create many more jobs by making it easy and cheap to take loans for purchasing income generating assets. It will help transform India into an efficient, world class economy.

Views Given to FICCI on the Union Budget 2014

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b1XJSrFRS8

Impact of Indian Union Budget 2014 on IT and Electronics sector

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N2lzkzqoLs

As recorded by NewsX Channel

Policies on Cybersecurity

Co-authored with Parminder Singh

The need for cybersecurity has become apparent with the increasingly important role played by Information Technology and Telecom in India’s growth and the role of internet and telecom backbone in India’s socio-economic activities. Without a robust security infrastructure in place, cyberspace can become a vulnerable nerve-center where any act of sabotage or espionage can comprise India’s financial systems, citizen’s services, and sensitive data to the extent of partial or complete paralysis of India’s critical infrastructure. The reports of nation-led cyber offensives such as the Stuxnet virus attack on Iran’s nuclear reactors and the espionage attempts by hackers based in China against several states put cyber-security at the heart of national security.

Cybersecurity comprises of multiple facets including Network security, Information security, Critical Infrastructure protection, Law enforcement and Disaster recovery. These facets come with their unique and often inter-dependent issues that need to be addressed keeping a holistic perspective in view than following a piecemeal approach. The scope for cybersecurity goes beyond the traditional jurisdictions of ministries and departments as it involves processes and people at the level of each of stakeholder jointly. It is increasingly been observed that Security needs to be incorporated at the design and operations stage rather than as an additional feature to be put on the top of existing systems and processes.

One of the interesting observations for Cybersecurity in India is that although Cybersecurity is a critical component of National security, it is the private sector which controls most of the critical information infrastructure. This intrinsic feature calls for Government of India to look beyond regulatory framework and partner with private organizations for national cybersecurity. The private organizations operating the critical infrastructure would need to look beyond the profit-centric approach for partnership initiatives. This also mandates the use of implementable security solutions that are cost effective. But even before exploring this public-private partnership, an atmosphere of trust and cooperation is imperative between the government and industry. Recent steps by the government in setting up Joint Working Groups on different facets of Cybersecurity are laudable.

Another challenge for India’s Cybersecurity strategy is the need to achieve the fine balance between security through data encryption and the necessity for Law Enforcement Agencies to monitor the information exchange for national security and anti-terrorism operations. The national encryption policy needs to be formulated and rolled out to prevent possible conflicting situations.

Pursuit and conviction of trans-national cyber criminals is a critical condition for maintaining deterrence. This cannot be achieved without international cooperation at multiple levels which reaches beyond national boundaries and jurisdictions. Fresh avenues of dialogue between sovereign nations through existing and new forums are desired to work towards international treaties for law enforcement.

Education, awareness and human resource capacity building is another dimension of a robust Cybersecurity framework. Partnership with Academia will help develop much needed skilled security manpower and fuel research into cyber forensics and analytics. Reports indicate that India will need half a million cyber-security professionals by 2015. A cybersecurity educational eco-system supported by leading technology institutions is essential for such capacity building.

The nation and industry is anticipating a comprehensive and progressive Cybersecurity policy which takes into account the multiple dimensions and challenges that are faced by a diverse nation like India. An institutional framework for managing these dimensions should be responsive, agile and adaptable to cope with this highly dynamic issue. As the government rolls out the national cybersecurity architecture in the coming months, the nation hopes that a resilient mechanism will be put in place that can withstand any future cyber warfare.

Impact of eHealth Centre (eHC)

In the developing world healthcare delivery is constrained by lack of appropriate infrastructure, medical personnel and electronic medical records. In India we created the eHealth Centre (eHC) as an innovative and visionary cloud enabled health care infrastructure that can be rapidly rolled out to provide affordable preliminary healthcare along with tele-health services. It leverages the power of cloud technology to provide high quality healthcare in resource constrained settings. The solution attempts to hide the technical complexities in the backend while creating a robust front-end solution. This solution conceptualized by HP, Government Relations is implemented as cross HP collaboration (HP GR, HP SSI, HP TS) and partnership with external partners- Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), O.P. Jindal Sansthan.

 

 Problem statement

About 75% of health care infrastructure, medical manpower and other health resources are concentrated in urban areas where just 27% of the population lives. Most of the poor living in rural areas is isolated from the benefits of formal health care and many of them access untrained local 'private practitioners' incase of any illness.

The basic health care infrastructure in rural areas in India is based on the population norms of having one Primary Healthcare centre (PHC) for every 30,000 people and one Sub-Centre for every 5000 people. However, the existing public health infrastructure, is understaffed and poorly managed and cannot be monitored. PHC and other medical institutes face a challenge and are sub-optimally functional due to staff shortage and poor uptime of essential equipment. They also do not cover the last mile of healthcare as there is no electricity or connectivity in the hinterland.

 

Solution Description

The  eHealth Centre (eHC) has been conceptualized and created to provide affordable healthcare in the remotest of locations, leveraging HP technology. The solution is equipped with built in electricity through power generators, built in connectivity (2 MBPS via leased line with redundant satellite connectivity). This is the first of its kind solution in the world where a rapidly deployable telemedicine solution has been created with all vital diagnostic equipment being integrated directly to the Cloud hosted EMR.

The solution positions HP at an extremely competitive advantage to help government mitigate their issue of providing healthcare to the last mile.

The solution consists of a standard shipping container converted into a Health centre which can be easily transported and even air-lifted. The solution has all vital diagnostics  equipment that are integrated directly to the Cloud hosted Electronic Medical Records (EMR) solution. The video conferencing solution that is built-in can be operated by paramedics to connect with the specialist medical personnel providing medical consultation.  The entire solution is designed to eliminate the need for highly skilled manpower at the remote location where the infrastructure is deployed.

eHC thus provides an   access to healthcare in rural and remote areas. The infrastructure is highly affordable and easily deployable as compared to the Brick and Mortar alternatives. The Cloud hosted EMR aids in disease surveillance by tracking disease patterns and risk factors. It acts as a means of providing efficient collection, storage and analysis of patient health data by means of a centralized health database and thus helps in research and health policy formulation

The solution is being viewed as a source for Big Data analytics on healthcare by Government of India. Government of India has earmarked USD 10 million to experimentally roll out more eHC’s, based on the first prototype that had been rolled out.

Till now, attempts at introducing Telemedicine in infrastructure challenged economies have met with limited success. This is because of non-integration of the vital diagnostic equipment, non-usage of a centrally hosted EMR, lack of monitoring and management systems, poor institutional support and limited integration with the Government’s health delivery system.

The solution in this paper integrates the following vital diagnostic equipment directly to the Cloud hosted EMR (a) Blood analyzer, (b) Spirometer, (c) ECG, (d) Stethoscope

In order to ensure that provider absenteeism is curbed and to ensure monitoring of the solution, a central dashboard has been provided which provides constant data analytics and alerts, including video feed of patients using the facilities of the eHC.

The solution also monitors the uptime of the refrigerator and the power to the eHC using switches. This ensures that alerts are sent out if temperature sensitive medicines such as vaccines are damaged due to power outage.

The concept also has innovations in the institutional structure to support the solution. It has created local governmental structure for the MHC that constitutes the Village head and key people from the village to ensure management and upkeep of the solution.

The solution integrates Cloud offering, HP’s workstations, software offerings, networking offerings, TS offerings and enterprise offerings to create a One HP solution that enables the following (a) Access to Super Specialists, through remote medical consultation at any location in the world, (b) Collection of automated health data directly from equipment can be made available at Health Cloud for diagnosis and remote expert medical consultation, (c) Remote Monitoring of Medical Personnel to mitigate the provider absenteeism, (d) Fingerprint enabled tracking of patient records, (e) SMS based medication reminders for critical diseases and immunization adds to patient assistance and tracking (f) Remote Monitoring of eHC medical equipment makes the solution sustainable and reliable (g) Referral to tertiary healthcare facilities, (h) Monitoring of power outage in medicine refrigeration facility, (i) Ability to do disease surveillance in real time and (j) tracking of patient history and also assists in building a patient database for future reference and policy formulation.

 

Figure 1: Concept of Cloud Enabled Micro Health Centre and Analytics based Medical Dashboard

Evidence the solution works

The first pilot eHealth Centre solution serves a catchment area with population of 20,000 and has had 1054 new patients in the first month of its operation. The solution has been rolled out in a cluster of 5 villages in District Kaithal in the state of Haryana in India. The telemedicine studio has been setup at the Agroha Medical University. All patient data have been captured in EMR and can be a source for patient analytics, disease surveillance.

Figure 2: Actual MHC at a Village in Haryana, India and the transportation of the solution

Competitive approaches

Different models and frameworks have been proposed for implementing cloud computing in healthcare. There are several studies describing the potential of cloud technology to provide quality healthcare in remote, underserved areas of the population. A cloud based rural healthcare information system model has been proposed by Padhy et al [[i]]. Another study explores the cloud computing paradigm to share electronic health records and addresses the related security concerns. However, there is no single solution that  has integration of the vital diagnostic equipment, usage of a centrally hosted EMR, monitoring and management systems, institutional support and integration with the Government’s health delivery system. The current solution developed and deployed in collaboration with CSIR, Government of India, Jindal Sansthan (Civil Society), Maharaja Agrasen Medical College, Agroha, Orion eServices Pvt. Ltd. Centre for Digital Economy Policy Research and 3M, addresses all the above issues.

Current status

The solution has already been deployed and is running for over 2 months now. By May next year, there will be 4 more such solution deployed by the Government.

Next steps

The solution is being examined by the 20 country regional body of Indian Ocean Rim Association of regional Cooperation as a trans-national solution to be adopted by all the member countries. Cross HP Project team plan as well to team up with one of the global leading NGOs to examine opportunities replication and implementation of the solution in developing countries with special focus on Africa.

The immediate next step is to develop a clinical decision support system that would aid in the diagnosis in order to mitigate the severe shortage of trained medical personnel and doctors.

The solution would also need more rigorous Big Data analytic tools to support management, policy making and drug discovery efforts. The plan is to collaborate with HP labs and offer this project as an ideal platform for piloting some of their latest researches and solutions.

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[[i]] http://uniascit.in/files/documents/2012_0207.pdf