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Technology Sabha 2008
SWAN experiences
(From L to R) Kshatrapati Shivaji, Rajkumar, Ashish Sanyal, Debashis Sur,
and Anurag Shrivastav |
A forum cannot be completed without an open discussion amongst
experts. A panel discussion was part of Technology Sabha 2008 which was attended
by Ashish Sanyal, Senior Director, Ministry of Communications & IT, Government
of India; Rajkumar, Secretary IT, Government of Gujarat; Anurag Shrivastav,
Additional Secretary IT, Government of Madhya Pradesh; Kshatrapati Shivaji,
Secretary IT, Government of Maharashtra; and Debashis Sur, Head Enterprise Business,
Tata Teleservices. The topic of discussion was ‘SWAN Challenges.’
State Wide Area Network was the first central initiative towards a Pan India
network. Speaking about common challenges, Sanyal said, “e-Governance is
only about 25% technology. Technology can deliver things but some of the other
factors are more important and usually people get stuck in those areas.”
He asked the project managers to have the right attitude for a long term plan.
One of the biggest challenges he observed was that no one in particular from
the corporate sector is ready to work for the state government except for some
PSUs.
Rajkumar, who has been successfully operating SWAN for the last few years in
Gujarat, spoke about his experiences and plans for SWAN in that state. He said
that the chief minister is able to address citizens using Swagat which is based
on SWAN and now he wants to extend the program to the block level and is confident
about the whole initiative. For successful implementation, he felt that PPP
is the most suitable model and the whole infrastructure should be managed by
telecom companies. “We need to look at last mile connections in order to
avoid problems with G2C services. Power supply is one huge problem if it is
not reliable,” said Rajkumar. He added that Wipro is taking care of Gujarat’s
SWAN upgradation.
Kshatrapati Shivaji shared his experiences and opinions about the SWAN implementation
in Maharashtra. “We have just started with SWAN whereas Gujarat has gone
a long way in this. As they say, experience is the best teacher, we have been
benefited a lot from their experiences. We taken a number of precautionary steps
for SWAN,” said Shivaji. He felt that before seamless integration of technology,
one needs seamless integration of the entire organization. Further, according
to Shivaji, e-Governance should take the form of mobile governance.
Further, According to Shrivastav choosing vendors, OEMs and others was a difficult
task. He spoke about the difficulties he faced while implementing the network
in problem areas of MP which faces problems from dacoits. Electricity is one
more problem in rural areas.“One of the biggest problems I am facing is
that of attracting trained manpower. It is difficult to bring top engineering
professionals to extreme rural areas. They have a different vision altogether
and attracting them is a big task,” said Shrivastav.
Giving a vendor perspective about how technology can help, according to Sur
better wireless solutions will help a lot for last mile connectivity. Further,
commenting on Shivaji’s idea of mobile governance, Sur said, “e-Governance
to mobile governance is a fantastic idea but this will require a high level
of wireless activity.” As growth is exceeding expectations, scalability
is a big issue to be considered by the providers, he added. Talking about PPP,
Sur said, “We need to start thinking about PPP at the next level. Right
now, e-Governance is not a profitable business for providers and we need to
accept that. Further, we should try to make it a win-win situation for all.”
The discussion ended with some active participation by the audience.
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