Welcome to the Sabha

The e-Governance meeting point

The latest edition of the Technology Sabha saw bureaucrats spearheading the country’s e-Governance initiatives congregate in the environs of Kovalam, Kerala. By Aditya Kelekar

Participants at a panel discussion chaired by S P Singh, Sr Director, Ministry of Communications during Technology Sabha

Over the past three years, Technology Sabha has been the event that the stakeholders of India’s e-Governance revolution—IT secretaries, officers from the state IT departments or those from associated e- Governance agencies—have always attended without fail. Beyond the forum’s agenda for sharing lessons and best practices for many, it has been an opportunity for the participants to make and renew ties with their peers from different states.

Technology Sabha 2008 was another triumph. Held at hotel Uday Samudra in the town of Kovalam at Kerala, the event witnessed participation from bureaucrats engaged in IT projects from over 17 states and union territories. The Sabha’s primary objective of serving as a reality check on progress in various states often leads to some severe self-criticism and this time’s sessions were no different. “There is no doubt that e-Governance isn’t being implemented as fast and as professionally as it should be,” said R Chandrashekhar, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Communications & IT in his keynote address to the participants.

Chandrashekhar didn’t stop at presenting a report card on the state of e-Governance in India, though. Among other challenges, he talked about the need to bring about concurrent changes in governmental procedures to reflect the necessities of e-government projects, the difficulties in finding adequately skilled staff and the challenges associated with change management. These obstacles found repeated mention in several of the other speakers’ presentations.

A wide variety of presentations was made. These included those by heads of e-Governance projects in states and officials from the Ministry of Communications & IT.

S P Singh, Sr Director, Ministry of Communications chaired a panel discussion on state data centre implementation. CLM Reddy, Head, Courts Informatics Division, National Informatics Centre, spoke about how the judiciary is benefiting from IT. Dr K S Subramanian, DDG NIC & Advisor IT CAG talked about assuring and securing e-Governance.

Yet other luminaries such as Vikas Nath, Advisor e-Governance, United Nations Development Program and Prof Subash Bhatnagar from IIM Ahmedabad also presented at the event.

Much of the discussion veered around change management. Concerns related to the competency and willingness of concerned departments in mapping old processes to the emerging networked scenario were raised and discussed. Truth be told, in some cases it was felt that it was just a question of doing the mapping with sincerity. Jayant Sinha, Head IT, Uttarakhand Power Corporation Ltd brought this out in an anecdote: when a child was asked at school as to what place he was born, he replied, “Thiruvananthapuram”; when the teacher further asked him to spell the place, the kid flinched. “In that case, it is Goa,” he said, spelling out the easy word!

Human resources or, more specifically, the dearth of talent was also taken up in almost every presentation. Professor Bhatnagar of IIM Ahmedabad pointed out that solutions existed. “Key people who drive these projects need to be retained throughout the life of the project,” Bhatnagar observed referring to government officials who are subject to transfers. He recommended that steps be taken to protect the interests of such persons so that their promotions would not be affected even as they dedicated themselves to the projects before them.

Talks on various aspects of e-Governance were interspersed with presentations by vendor companies who had sponsored the event. Many of these IT satraps chose to talk about issues related to IT infrastructure that sprang up in the course of e-Governance projects. Amuleek Bijral’s (Country Manager, RSA Securities) presentation on security and citizen services was a fine example of this trend. Illustrating how critical information is scattered in many different places, Bijral said that having a perimeter-based approach to external threats is no longer sufficient.

The Business Publication Division of Indian Express (the publishers of Express Computer and the organizers of this event) announced that it would shortly be coming out with an exclusive magazine on e- governance, the first issue of which would be launched on Independence Day 2008.

The four-day event also included trips to nearby tourist and leisure destinations. Participants were seen having a merry time. As the event wound down, many departed with the parting greeting, “See you at the next Tech Sabha!”

aditya.kelekar@expressindia.com