INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES · powered by the Mkrishi model, AADHAR- creation of...

Volume 25, No. 1, February 2015

IFIP WG 9.4

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN

DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

A Newsletter of theInternational Federation for Information Processing

Working Group 9.4and

Centre for Electronic GovernanceIndian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad


WEB VERSION

http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/egov/ifip/wg.htm

EDITOR

Subhash [email protected]

EDITORIAL ASSOCIATE

[email protected]

EDITORIAL OFFICE

Center for Electronic GovernanceIndian Institute of ManagementAhmedabad - 380 015, India.Phone: +91 79 6632 4128http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/egov/

Editorial

Welcome to the first issue of 2015. In this issue we carry 4 articles – a case study on transforming Indian farming powered by the Mkrishi model, AADHAR- creation of a new digital identity for Indians evolving as a solution to facilitate government services to the citizens, utilization of mobile devices and internet by developing countries and e-government application in South Africa.

I was recently in Kathmandu to speak in an ICT for development conference organized by the Computer Association of Nepal. As you pass through the immigration and customs, wait inordinately for your bag to arrive and watch over zealous policemen regulating the people waiting for their folks to arrive, it is clear that Nepal is at the lower rung of development amongst the developing countries. Therefore it is no surprise that on UNPAN index of eGovernance Nepal does not do very well. Even though its index of human capacity and infrastructure is similar or better than Bangladesh and Pakistan, it does badly on delivery of online services in comparison to these countries.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the IT minister of Nepal is a technocrat. He has a PhD from New York University in Operations Research with computing as a subsidiary field. All the professionals that I interacted with seemed knowledgeable and competent. Yet, the use of ICTs for the benefit of citizens is very limited. I had thought that committed and knowledgeable leadership is an asset. However, the political instability in Nepal takes its toll. Itallows the bureaucracy to dig in and does not permit things to change. (Editorial continued on the last page)

In this Issue…

ICT enabled Digital Identity catalysing the Largest Democracy of World: AADHAAR Cards promoting Online Service Delivery in India

Transforming Indian Farming Through the PRIDE™ Model – Powered by mKRISHI® – A Case Study

Exploiting Data for supporting developing countries

Exploring The Design And Development Of The Electronic Government (E-Government) Applications Landscape In South Africa

Conference Announcements

.


ICT enabled Digital Identity catalysing the Largest Democracy of World:

AADHAAR Cards promoting Online Service Delivery in India

Shilpi VarshneyDirector, Projects and Skill Development,

[email protected], [email protected]

THE NECESSITY FOR CREATION OF LARGEST DIGITAL HUMAN DATABASE OF WORLDIdentity Crisis of residents in the Largest DemocracyIndia is second most populous country of the world with a population of about 1.27 Billion people1. This population is having 50% of youth population under the age of 25 years. This is the largest democracy of the world, which needs to deliver services on massive scale across the country. Therefore there has always been an indispensable need of an integrated digitised database of all Indian residents’to reach them as per need and deliver them services as per their necessity.This connected digital atmosphere will also help in gauging the citizen centric demands related to the basic needs of citizens like food, health, education, livelihood options to having better understanding of human indicators for planning the funds and resource allocation of Government for advancing Human indicators of development. Aadhaar, the new digital identity of an Indianis evolving as a solution to facilitate the basic needs of Indian residents and enabling the government as well to deliver citizen centric services throughout the nation.

This article presents the facts relevant with the Identity Crisis of Indian residents before the arrival of Aadhaar and its multifarious advantages coming up in Service Delivery ecosystem to the Indian citizens having this new Digital Identity. This tool on one hand is enabling the formation of largest online biometric enabled Human Database of world and on the other hand it’s also creating a real-time authentic and transparent referral system facilitating online service delivery. The bouquet of services to be delivered through Aadhaar begins with Govt. services and is also catalysing the private service providers to reaching their customers through Aadhaar based authentication system. The following piece of write-up is

presenting a Bird’s eye view of Aadhaar and its utility for Indian residents.

National level Unique Identity: Digital and Online VerifiableAadhaar is a Unique Identity because it’s a combination of Demographic and Biometric attributes of an individual. The Demographic attributes includes the Name, Gender, Age and Address of an individual while the Biometric attributes captures the fingerprints and iris patterns of the same individual. The combination of this two features makes it a unique combination which is digital as well as online verifiable through access to Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)1database only when permitted. In the absence of such system before, there was possibility of fake/duplication of identity based on same name, address etc, and in the absence of biometric features the unique genetic characteristics of an individual was uncaptured.

Aadhaar: The Digital Identityishighly relevant in Indian Context

Aadhaar, a 12 Digit Unique number issued by UIDAI to every resident of India was basically created for improving the delivery of government supported welfare services and subsidy schemes to Indian citizens. UIDAI initiated the commencement ofAadhaar cards since September 2010 and till Feb 10th 2015 more than 75 crores(as per https://portal.uidai.gov.in).Aadhar numbers have been issued in our country of 127 crore people from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. The achievement of Aadhaar generation number in itself is substantial to indicate that it covers majority of Indians presently to initiate any consolidated activity of Government. AadhaarDigital Database in India has become the World’s Largest Biometric Identity System. This facility is enabling the government to instantly connect with all the enrolled residents through this unique digital platform.

Aadhaar number has been playing a pivotal role in delivering the citizen centric services as envisaged during its inception. This unique digital identity helps in beneficiary identification for delivery of social welfare schemes, facilitating financial transactions through microATM-payments and is

1Current Population of India, estimated as on15th January 2015as per indaionlinepages.com


permitting valuable inputs related to demographic details for developmental planning in State, District and Local level within India.

Improving EfficiencyAadhaar is helping in improvisation of Administrative processes. The Govt. Departments were engaging agencies and people for service delivery dispersed across remote locations. The Aadhaar enabled verification platforms helps in doing the earlier verifications in easier and real time basis like monitoring the attendance through Biometric features thus ensuring its real time success.

Figure1. Aadhaar: The Digital Identity

Source Author

Many such live examples are now available to witnessin execution of the flagship schemes like monitoring the attendance of teachers involved in imparting primary education under ongoing SarvaShikshaAbhiyaan (SSA) in thousands of government funded schools across India. Similarly Aadhar enabled biometric systems are used for monitoring the attendance of government employees, daily outlays of goods and payments, mid-day meals, reimbursement of MGNREGS wages to the labors etc. Therefore Aadhaar is providing more information of grassroots enabling the Government towards better utilisation of resources and making financial disbursements of welfare schemes more effective and efficienttowards achieving itsdevelopmental agendas.

Advancing Human Development IndicatorsThe development and welfare schemes of Government in a country like India are made to support the poor and eligible residents in all and

different stages of a citizen’s life cycle. The information stored in Aadhaar database provides inputs relevant to each of these phases, making it indispensable for the concerned government departments to partner with UIDAI advancing Human Development. Aadhaar with its real time online database helps the government in making correct financial estimations and therefore coming up with better executable developmental policies and welfare schemes for the citizen.

Better Beneficiary TargetingThe majority of poor population in developing countries like India are dependent on the welfare and subsidy schemes of Government for their livelihood. The major ongoing schemes across sectors are related to basic amenities (food grains, kerosene), health(maternity benefits for institutional delivery), education (free education, scholarships), livelihood (MGNREGS), pensions (old age, widow, disability) etc.

These schemes are coordinated by different government departments and were thus dependent on the departmental database for helping their targeted beneficiaries.

Figure2. Major Welfare Schemes in IndiaSource Author

Therefore all the departments were working in silos in the absence of any holistic system or database to provide 360 degree outlook of the target groups and assess the benefits they are availing. This was leading to duplication of beneficiary on one side and inclusion of fake beneficiaries on the other. Aadhaar is providing a Single Unified View of each Resident for efficient targeting of the government schemes applicable to each eligible resident. Thus Aadhaar is helping our Government in effective policy making, even-handed distribution of resources and subsidy management for human development. The major


schemes of Government of India identified with Aadhaar presentlyas common identification parameter are shown in the adjacent diagram:

Facilitating Citizen Centric GovernanceAadhaar has become an efficient tool for facilitating citizen centric governance. It is becoming a Universal Identification platform to select beneficiaries across disadvantaged and marginalised sections in the country for delivery of welfare and subsidised schemes. It is this digital identity leading to opening of paperless bank accounts. Aadhaar linked bank accounts are now linked with Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) facility to transfer funds and subsidies from Government Treasury Accounts to beneficiaries bank account impeccably. This does not stops here, the beneficiary can withdraw the cash using micro-ATM touch points with their fingerprintsand Aadhaar numbers.

Welfare Programmes of the Government of India

The Govt. of India is the largest Democracy in the World and it invests huge money for the welfare and benefit of it’s under privileged and marginalised communities through the variouswelfare schemes. These schemes are mandated to include the excluded communities into the mainstream economy of India. The Welfare Schemes in India are complex as well as massive as it caters to millions of beneficiaries and may not create its envisioned impact on delays or leakages.

Figure3. Benefits of Aadhaar: Source Author

The potential of Aadhaar linkage ensures to deal with increasing the access to beneficiaries who were unable to avail it due to lack of identity documents, excludes fake and duplicate beneficiaries and provides single entitlement out of the multiple schemes of similar nature as per entitlement. For example a resident can avail only one pension out of the various pension benefits like Old age pension, handicapped pension or widow pension. This is possible to validate only by authenticating the eligibility and accordingly provide the only applicable benefits and deter the claim of other similar benefits. The government welfare schemes provides benefits to the targeted beneficiaries in following three ways and Aadhaar is playing a vital role in each of these processes:

Providing Money to Beneficiary in Cash

Providing Subsidies

Payments to Individual Service Providers

The national schemes like MGNREGS, National Social Assistance Program (NSAP)pays the wages directly to the beneficiary. Previously it was paid in the form of cheque or cash but with Aadhar, UEBA the government has started Direct Cash Transfers to the beneficiary’s individual Bank Account. This makes the process prompt, transparent

Schemes like Targeted Public Distribution System (TDPS) provides subsidies to its beneficiaries now in their bank accounts directly through Aadhaar.

The schemes for Universal Primary Education like SarvaShikshaAbhiyan promotes free primary education to all children across India. All the Service Providers related to these schemes for delivering its mandated services like creating infrastructure, paying salaries to teachers, providing books and uniforms are done through Aadhaar authenticated process which makes it effective, cuts delays and leakages and is executed by means of digital and verifiable process now in place to promptly deliver services.


and automatic once the Beneficiary Identity is established. There are certain schemes related to development and social objectives like Janani Suraksha Yojana where the benefits are provided as Conditional Cash Transfers only when the beneficiary fulfils certain criteria laid by the schemes.

Aadhaar Applications across Domains

Aadhaar linked Financial Inclusion and Electronic PaymentsAadhaarhas become the Financial Address of Indian Resident to enable access to Banking and Insurance sector. The Ministry of Finance has amended Prevention of Money Laundering Rules to identify Aadhaar as officially valid Know Your Customer (KYC) document. The Reserve Bank of India has issued a Notification on 28th September, 2011 to recognize Aadhar as a Valid KYC document. This milestone decision is makingAadhaar a reliable platform for Authentication in financial transactions. Aadhaar linked electronic bank account is now becoming the basis for transferring benefits and subsidies directly from the Government Department Treasury Accounts to the beneficiary Account ensuring transparent governance and preventing red tape or leakages in welfare schemes. This is made possible through an online payment mechanism which is Aadhaar Enabled Payment

System (AEPS). This online inter-operable AEPS architecture permits credits to the resident’s electronic bank account from anywhere in India and the beneficiary in turn can utilise this money using various financial delivery channels like ATMs, microATMs, BC models or Bank branch. The AEPS and microATMs makes possible real-time and online fund transfers creating a cost-effective and efficient remittance ecosystem for Government as well as private service delivery agencies in the county.

UIDAI provides a facility of opening Bank Account at the time of Aadhaar Enrolment. Once the resident gives consent, the respective Bank Account is opened in a Bank of resident’s choice among the listed 64 banks tied-up with UIDAI. The National Payment Corporation of India has offered Aadhaar Payment Bridge System (APBS) which facilitates the dispensation of payments file from the Government Departments via assigned Banks to the beneficiary’s linked bank account. The use of APBS and AEPS enables electronic fund transfers reducing the delays from Govt. and the microATMs closer to resident’s locality provides them easier and nearby access to their funds as per need. This is becoming a blessing specially for the migrant population which is estimated around 100 million in India, as they earn their livelihood in far-flung areas and their benefits as well as wages are remitted timely in their bank accounts which can be utilised by them or their family members.

UID enabled MicropaymentsUID: Unique Identification Number later renamed as Aadhaar number, UEBA is enabled Bank Account linked with the Aadhaar card. This arrangement works with the BC operating Model in Financial Inclusion and provides the following financial transactional features to its account holders:

The account has facility of electronic deposits and withdrawal in micro-amounts

It works promptly in sending and receiving remittances

It provides balance queries and transactional history

Transactions done in such types of accounts are done on the pre-paid mobile like system. The BCs are able to make payments and offer basic banking services out of certain amount deposited with the Bank as a “Prepaid balance” where the balance amount changes with every transaction


done by the BC. It decreases when a customer makes a deposit and it increases when a customer withdraws money, because when the customer is making deposit, he pays a physical cash to BC who subsequently makes an electronic transfer from the BC Account to Customer Account. Similarly while making the withdrawal the electronic transaction is made from the customer account to BC account and the BC provides physical cash to the customer. These transactions between electronic and physical cash is now preferred across India specially among the villagers. This pattern of Banking not only brings down the transactional cost of banking but also promotes local level organised cash transactions which is one of the important objective of rural banking.

Technology cutting the process of Service DeliveryTechnology must promote banks to reach the customers rather than the customers coming to the banks. Keeping this vision, in the Report of Committee on Financial Sector Reforms recommended that a Nationwide Electronic Financial Inclusion System (NEFIS) must be created to link bank accounts and make direct electronic fund transfers to provide financial services to last mile. Thus the concept of microATM device was evolved, having the combined features of debit/credit card, processing on Point-of-Service(POS) terminal and authentication services of UIDAI. The microATM is therefore, the initial step towards providing low-cost, online, interoperable payment platform in India deployed by banks directly or by its service providers. The UID infrastructure connects to the prevailing Financial Inclusion infrastructure and makes microATMs a broad based platform for deposits, withdrawals, fund transfers and balance enquiry. A UID enabled micropayments system directly deposits the government benefits into beneficiary accounts just like the salary of any company gets directly credited to the employees account on a given date.Benefits to various stakeholders using MicroPayment SolutionsThe various stakeholders involved in the micropayment ecosystem like the Central and State Governments, Banks, BCs and the Beneficiary are all benefitted with the solutions. The real time scenario becomes relevant with the following example: Smt. SonaBai of village Nimkhedi used to travel upto the Bank branch for

withdrawal of MGNREGA payment in the conventional banking system with a cheque provided to her from the Panchayat for the workdone under MGNREGA. After the generation of her Aadhaar Card, she has a UID-Enabled Bank Account (UEBA). The MGNREGA process works like before, her muster roll travels from panchayat to block and finally to the state. But unlike previous situation when her cheque was issued, now the amount is electronically transferred to SonaBai’s UEBA and she is intimated about this payment credited into her bank account through an SMS. So she doesn’t need to travel, lose her that day’s wage, bank branch is not loaded with such customers and the concerned department of the government is having an assurance of transferring benefits to authenticated Aadhaar linked beneficiary account making it a WIN-WIN situation for all stakeholders. A UID enabled micropayments can actually bridge the gap of financial access across the rural India thus including the financially excluded Indians. The Access to finance for all will be the turning point in promoting the development in India.

Aadhaar linked LPG Distribution and Subsidy ManagementIn India, the 89% of LPG is used for householdconsumption and itsgoing to escalate by about 10% in 2015 as per sources from the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. The LPG used for Domestic consumers is subsidized by the Govt. of India. Every household is restricted to only one registered LPG connection (they are permitted to refill as per their domestic cooking demand) in order to prevent any misuse of this important energy resource.LPG is an environment friendly green fuel having wide range of applications other than domestic cooking. On top of this,it’s subsidized pricing makes its more ardent energy option for market players by manipulating the consumption at local level. Till recent past there has been several instances of obtaining more LPG connections per household making fake consumer details to take arbitrage of subsidized domestic LPG. This was achieved by making multiple connections in the name of existing residents or creating fake connections in the name and address of non-existing residents. Integration of Aadhaar unique Digital Identity Number with LPG connection is making one-time validation to identify the residents across the Oil Marketing


Companies(OMCs) and thus cleaning up the LPG Database from fake or duplicate connections. Previously, the LPG cylinder distribution was home delivered and manually managed with weak verification and consent from the resident leading to the mentioned discrepancies. The Online authentication service of Aadhaar incorporated in subsidised residential LPG process genuinely verifies the beneficiary during the delivery of cylinders deterring any diversion or malpractices. This process is also enabling the Govt. to leverage the subsidy being credited directly to the resident’s linked Bank account. This process itself mitigates illicit diversions of cylinders and thus streamlining the disbursement of subsidies.

Aadhaar linked Authentication in TelecomAadhaar has become a KYC for availing Telecom and Internet connection. The Telecom sector in India has always played a very significant role in accelerating the country’s economy. The histrionic penetration of mobile telephony has further changed the pace of connectivity in the recent years. The easy and cheap access of telephony has also created convenient ecosystem to the constantly increasing global terrorism as well as turned to a national threat leading to various anti-national instances. These generated the need of having a robust and strong KYC before issuing any new telephone, internet or mobile connections. The Department of Telecommunication (DOT) has rigorously scrutinised all the Telecom Operators and has imposed heavy financial penalties for any instance of incorrect documentary information. This lead to massive Document Re-verification process for all the existing subscribers during the recent past. In the absence of any common set of verification documents, the process was quite ambiguous and tedious for the captive consumer base in millions. As per 2010-2011 Annual Report of DOT, an amount of 700 crores penalties was imposed on telecom operators during the KYC document audits. Aadhaar authentication is not only making the Telecom KYC more robust and real time but is quite paperless and cheaper. The Telecom Operators can store the digitally signed authentication process response from UIDAI as a proof of verification. On the basis of industry experts this process of verification reduces the subscriber validation cost by about Rs 30 per subscriber making it extremely convenient for the

Telecom Operators. In addition to this, these operators are issuing more than 30 million SIM connections monthly. Aadhaar integration is thus saving more than 1000 crore rupees of the Telecom sector giving it sufficient impetus to expand constantly in the largest Democracy of the World, which is now also evolving as Digital India.

Aadhaar Authentication is a real-time service of UIDAI. This process needs to be managed by the Authentication Service Agencies (ASA) having secured connectivity established with Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR). The Telecom Operators having the required infrastructure and scale can become the natural choice to act as ASAs for UIDAI to reinvent a new pathway for validating the identity of Indian Residentsonce they are empanelled through established processes. This generates a new avenue for the Telecom players not only to validate their data but to also help Govt. as well as the private service agencies to utilise their validated data.

Internet and e-commerceIndia is in the forefront of rapidly growing e-commerce markets with more than 100 million Internet users in the country. The rapidly growing telecom sector continuously penetrating Broadband connectivity and increasing the mobile and internet connections is spearheading the e-commerce market. Aadhaarwith unique digital identity and online authentication services is creating ample basis to validate the seller and buyer relation in the digital world. In India the existing number of Internet users provide million dollar base for each e-commerce company to lure its customers. The Indian mindset and KHARIDARI (the act of purchasing by going to market physically) tendency is quite conservative and still addicted to few basics like seeing and touching the product before buying and paying only after we purchase, i.e get the product and then pay the cost. In the online market this tendency is called COD (Cash on Delivery). This option also works fine for those willing customers who are not having any online banking facilities or are uncomfortable with making online payments. This situation generates an ambiguity for the seller from fake customer identities as there is no way by which he can check the authenticity of the customer ordering products online, specially before getting money.


Aadhaar can help in such circumstances, if Aadhaar authentication is mandated for a customer as a process of online ordering system. Each online customer can be authenticated by Aadhaar number through One Time Pin (OTP)sent to their registered mobile numbers. This also validates the shipping address by linking to the real customers. The inclusion of Aadhaar authentication will create more selling opportunities for the sellers and will help customers to link with genuine buyers as well because only the valid buyers can avail the required data from UIDAI after fulfilling its required norms.

The Whistle blowers: Enrolment Agencies generating AadhaarLast but not least, it’s important to mention here that all the above service deliveries are made possible only after creating the Aadhaar.

Pic 1: Biometric Capturing of resident during Aadhaar Enrolment at AISECT PEC Source AISECT

Therefore all the enrolment agencies engaged in Aadhaar Card enrolment and card generation are the catalysers in this process, without their sincere efforts all the above benefits could not have been possible.Pic2 : Aadhaar Enrolment at AISECT PEC Source AISECT

AISECT2, is one of the Enrolment Agency under Registrar CSC-SPV. The organisation ispresently working in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Punjab and Bihar states, with about 650 AISECT Permanent Enrolment Centres across these states for catalysing the process of Aadhaar generation. AISECT has also initiated similar effortsalongwith the Banks engaged for Aadhaar Card generation with UIDAI.

AISECT has already made about 36 lakhsAadhar enrolments till Feb.’15andgenerated more than 29 lakhs Aadhaar Cardsfor Indian residents and is continuingits professional services for this innovative initiative to promote online service delivery in India.

The above piece of written information, provides us with vibrant panorama of Online Service Delivery ecosystem in India. The efforts made till date are small as compared to demography and population of India and basic needs of our people but we are happy with the right digital transformation being catalysed for development and strongly believe in the following lines of Martin Luther “If you can’t fly, you run, If you can’t run, you walk, If you can’t walk, you crawl but keep moving ahead”.

Acknowledgement and ReferencesI would extend sincere acknowledgement for Aadhaar generation statistics, information, images and reports from the following websites:https://uidai.gov.in, https://resident.uidai.net.in, https://portal.uidai.gov.inhttps://portal.uidai.gov.in/uidwebportal/enrolmentStatusShow.do, http://www.indiaonlinepages.com/population/india-current-population.htmlA report of the Committee on Financial Sector Reforms, A Hundred Small Steps, Aug 2008.Financial inclusion by extension of banking services—Use of Business Correspondents (BCs).RBI, January 2006. URL http://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/Notification/ PDFs/68417.pdf.Financial inclusion by extension of banking services—Use of Business Correspondents (BCs).

2AISECT is 29 years old leading ICT Training and services network of India and is in skill development, e-governance, formal education, FI and UID based service delivery, toknow more about AISECT please visit www.aisect.org


RBI, November 2009. URL http://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/Notification/PDFs/Aadhaar enabled servicedelivery at ttp:/uidai.gov.in/whitepaper_aadhaarenabledservice_delivery.pdf

Transforming Indian Farming Through the PRIDE™ Model – Powered by

mKRISHI® – A Case Study

Srini P.Ph.D., CISSP, Global Head – Agri Business, TCS

[email protected]

Sampath Selvan Program Manager, TCS

[email protected]

Introduction

Agriculture is an important part of the Indian economy and about 65% of Indian population depends directly on agriculture [1]. Over 70 per cent of the rural households depend on agriculture and it contributes about 17% to the total GDP and provides employment to over 60% of the population [1]. Even though food production has touched new highs in recent years it hasn’t kept pace with the exponential jump in the population. Although industrialized agriculture has been successful in producing large quantities of food, the future of food production is in jeopardy due to many problems in agriculture. The critical issues that plague Indian agriculture at present are the knowledge deficit and infrastructure deficit, especially in the rural areas and problems related to irrigation infrastructure, market infrastructure and transport infrastructure adding significant cost to farmers' operations especially for small and marginal landholding farmers. There are a number of schemes aimed towards developing agriculture but again the problem is in effective delivery mechanisms that can translate those into effective facilitation at the ground level, in terms of increasing productivity or decreasing cost or increasing price realization. To resolve these issues, new policy reforms were introduced re-organizing the production system in the form of corporate and contract farming. These production systems are well adopted in Farmer Producer Organization /producer co-operatives overcoming

many issues. However, these are dependent on Government subsidies and the forethought to ensure that these are transformed into self-sustaining, economically viable entities seems to be lacking.Thus, farming is becoming a “dead” profession with many marginal farmers opting to leave their lands barren and migrating into the cities in the hope of a better life.

To overcome this situation, TCS (Tata Consultancy Services)has spearheaded various initiatives across the country leveraging technology to alleviate the issues prevalent in the agricultural sector. Prominent among these is The Progressive Rural Integrated Digital Enterprise (PRIDE™) model powered by the TCS mKRISHI® platform. This is an output of the Innovation Labs of TCS and has been in various stages of research, pilots and field deployment since its origin in 2008. The thought process here is to provide the technology platform to transform Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) or any other farmer social network into an economically sustainable entity. The farmer groups are driven towards a market driven production approach through data driven analysis of market demand data, integrated knowledge base. This is coupled with an e-commerce engine for efficient market linkages and agricultural input linkages and an efficient delivery channel for distributing personalized cultivation practices to all farmers.

The PRIDE™Model and the mKRISHI® Platform[2]

A typical PRIDE™-centric ecosystem consists of the following framework in figure 1:

In such a system, a collective group like a Co-operative or a Farmer Producer Company is the central channel through which various Business and Agricultural activities are carried out. This collective group is generally an entity that operates on the field to connect various organizations like Agri-input industries, Food processing industries, Government organizations, Financial institutions, Agricultural machinery industry, and the stakeholders i.e. farmers. In addition, they also trade in large quantities collectively associating with all the farmers (stakeholders). However managing this entity manually is very difficult considering the diversity and distribution of every end consumer, producer, partner and stakeholder. In addition, economics of


growth and self-sustenance becomes another big challenge to overcome.

Figure 1: PRIDE™ Framework[2]

Hence, there is a need for a solution to effectively manage it through the appropriate injection of technology in all aspects of its interaction so that the end-result is a scalable, self-sustaining and economically viable entity with all the benefits as mentioned in Figure 2[3].

Figure 2: Impact of PRIDE™ empowered with mKRISHI® Technology

The mKRISHI® platform has been designed by TCS to improve the operational efficiency and performance of these entities that are critical to the working of the rural collective enterprise ecosystem. This involves professional and optimized management of resources, grouping of growers, forward (market) linkages, backward (agri-inputs and credit linkages), provision of access to advisory or consultancy information, improving data visibility and enabling Data Analytics in such an unorganized unstructured sector. All these are possible with the power of the mKRISHI® platform which is effectively harnessing the power of farmer numbers under a common umbrella and coupling with a smooth flow of data and information to bring structure into the sector. Operational optimization can be achieved and the collective enterprise’s performance can be improved multi-fold so that it can be effectively converted into a PRIDE™.

About mKRISHI®

mKRISHI® is a patented Mobile Based Personalized Services Delivery Platform offering a bouquet of Agricultural services such as Agro Advisory, Best Practices, Alert Services, Check Weather Forecast, Agri Supply Chain Management services (like Farm Produce Procurement), etc. among many others.


Figure 3: The mKRISHI® platform[3]

1. Agro Advisory service:Using voice, SMS and photo, farmers can send their queries to agro-experts sitting in a remote location. These experts reviewed the messages and provided recommendations using the same mobile platform. Experts also broadcast weather, Market price & government policies related information regularly to farmers. The advisory service has so far helped individual farmers significantly reduce costs associated with inputs, increase yield and improve quality of produce, thereby positively impacting their profit margins.

FIGURE 4: Agro Advisory Service[2]

2. Crop Rotation, Optimization and Planning System (CROPSTM): Crop Planning System as shown in Figure 5[3]is designed to deliver personalized crop production activities taking region specific, economic risk & farm historical information.


FIGURE 5: Crop Rotation, Optimization and Planning System - CROPSTM

These Personalized protocolsare delivered to farmers to follow through their mobile phones. Based on adhoc situations such as Disease / Pest attack, protocol are modified based on the information from the field. CROPS™ achieves demand based production ensuring better price for farmers produce.

3. Rural Participatory Sensing (RuPS): This is the crowd Sourcing & Participatory sensing process along with disease/pest prediction model to predict any production risk throughout the crop cycle. This increases awareness among farmers about various diseases that can affect their farms and provides them with prophylactic solutions. This is done by collecting data from farms through crowd sourcing to mine and analysing it to gain insights about farm conditions and thereby delivering to farmers.

FIGURE 6: Rural Participatory Sensing[3]

4. Agri Supply Chain Management services: With the mKRISHI® platform, the Intelligent Management of the Collective Entity, PRIDE™ becomes possible due to the instantaneous digitization of the available field data through the mKRISHI® Mobile Component by the transmission of this data over the GPRS or any other equivalent network, and the ready availability of this data for analysis by the experts / Supervisors and operational planners through the mKRISHI® Web Component. The analysed data is again transmitted back to the field for implementation. This will also enable farmers to collectively procure, sell, and perform various transactions. The ‘digital’ feature of the PRIDE™ is the core critical component to the success of this model and enables the rapid growth and its self-sustenance. The PRIDE™ model is implemented in many states of India not only in Agriculture but also in other allied sectors such as Livestock, Fisheries & Forestry.


Chennai Horticulture Produce Producer Company Ltd. (CHPCL)

The TCS-mKRISHI® project at Kancheepuram in Tamil Nadu has successfully demonstrated the concept of the PRIDE™with the formation of the “Chennai Horticulture Produce Producer Company Ltd”(CHPCL) and the subsequent appropriate technology injection in the form of the mKRISHI® platform.

Chennai Horticulture Produce Producer Company Limited (CHPCL) constitutes about 1500 registered farmers mainly from Kanchipuram & Villupuram districts of Tamil Nadu. About 90 % of the CHPCL farmers are from small & marginal farmers segment with effective women farmer participation in each cluster/group. Totally 80 clusters have been formed across these districts. Each cluster comprises of minimum 16 to maximum 20 farmers. These clusters are homogenous in nature. These groups have voluntarily joined together with an aim of achieving better productivity in farming, to get better financial inclusion. All these groups have been formed with the specific objective of production for a particular crop–For Eg: THENPAKKAM BHENDI FARMERS CLUSTER. Each group elected their own President and Treasurer who participate in discussion & decision making. This collective concept increases the farmers’ bargaining power & helps them to access credit from Banks & subsidies from the government.

CHPCL’s journey towards the Transformation to a PRIDE™FARM DIGITIZATIONUsing the mKRISHI® platform, CHPCL farmers’ information such as basic details, plot info, crop details & soil details are digitized, giving CHPCL admin access to customizable reports at any point of time. Farm digitization enables easier governance and management.

Crop Production (Advisory Services)

CHPCL experts providecrop production protocols to farmers using mKRISHI®CROPSTMsystem. Also they advise farmers queries using mKRISHI® on their mobile phones combined with personal visit on critical stages of crop. CHPCL experts are mandated to respond to farmers queries within 6 hours. About 60 % of the queries are mainly on the pest & disease management measures. In order to avoid environmental impact to the area & to reduce chemical pesticides & residual impact to the crop, CHPCL experts advices mainly organic fertilizers, organic pesticides to the crop. If the impact of the pest/disease is more than the Economic Threshold level (ETL), advice on timely application of the pesticides isgiven. This not only reduces the cost of input (Pesticides) Spray to the farmer but also protects the environment. As more importance is given to Integrated Pest Management, beneficial pests to the crops are protected &the crop agro ecosystem is also enriched.

The impact on the lives of CHPCL farmers to date (from the start of the project in 2012) through the technology intervention of the mKRISHI®-PRIDE™ model is illustrated in Figure 7 below. The highlights to date are the dramatic reductions in the fertilizers and plant protection chemicals usage and the subsequent reduction in the cost of production. This coupled with increased yield has led to a significant increase in the profitability for the CHPCL farmers.

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Figure 7: Impact of PRIDE™ Model[3]


Forward Linkage (Demand Based Production)CHPCL has entered intoMoUs with Fruit and Vegetable retailers in and around Chennai for selling farmers produce. With the intervention of CHPCL, farmers have been able to save a minimum of Rs. 3 to Rs 10 per Kg of each crop. mKRISHI® is used for estimating the produceavailability and accordingly CHPCL is serving retailers without much trouble in demand & supply process.Based on the relationship established with retail stores, the field team is in unique position to be able to assess demand for produce in the market & advice farmers on what quantity & quality of crop they should cultivate, based on their risk profile. This in turn will drive demand for inputs, which can be sourced accordingly from input companies. In the future, the mKRISHI®platform will facilitate thisdemand driven production, by providing the required technology.

Backward LinkageCHPCL is in the process of setting up a CHPCL Agri clinic center with the help of NABARD to supply quality Agri inputs such as Seed, Fertilizers, pesticides, bio fertilizers and farm machinery required by farmer members. mKRISHI® platform will facilitate this process by providing estimated demand at every point in time throughout the crop cycle. This helps in avoiding the costs associated with inventory overhead to service CHPCL farmers. Linking the various farmer clusters to financial institutions is one of the objectives of the CHPCL. To facilitate this, CHPCL is in the process of providing visibility into the credit needs of it’s farmer members to various banks with which it has signed MoUs so that they can plan accordingly. It is also working with various agricultural insurers to create specialized, group insurance products which can be taken at the PRIDE™ level for the benefit of its farmer members.

Figure 8: CHPCL’s Journey towards PRIDE™

To become self-sustained economically viable entity, CHPCL has to increase the volume of procurement, start Agri Input dealership business and focus on demand based protocol centric production model. CHPCL’s journey towards PRIDE™ is shown in Figure 8[3].

Implementation Challenges

A baseline study was undertaken by TCS at the site of the study area in 2011 to understand the ground reality and connect to the farmers at the grass roots level. The role of technology in bettering the farmers’ lives and the challenges in the field were better understood. Some of the key challenges faced in the field were mobile compatibility issues, mobile network connectivity issues, changing farmers’ mindset so that they could trust and adopt new technologies.

A key component of the mKRISHI® technology is the mobile device. It was found in the field that farmers actually owning the mKRISHI® compatible phones were very few and this was considerably hampering the adoption of the technology. This was overcome by introducing an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) version of the mKRISHI® platform so that any farmer owning a mobile phone could avail of the services. In addition, the inclusion of the field executives into the mKRISHI® technology platform ensured that


they could raise queries on behalf of the farmers they were servicing.

Even though most rural areas are supposedly within the range of a mobile tower, there are abundant pockets of dead coverage. To overcome these “dead pockets”, technological innovations such as caching the data for later transmission and automatically resorting to SMS transmission in areas of poor GPRS connectivity were introduced.

It was a new experience for a technology company like TCS, with limited knowledge of agriculture, to directly face farmers, interact with them and understand their problems and issues. TCS overcame these constraints by building rapport with the farmers and addressing their issues with a great deal of personal touch. Once the benefits of the association were clear to the farmers, technology was introduced bit by bit without significantly altering the status quo. Regular on-field and classroom trainings were conducted and agricultural best practices disseminated to the farmers.

In addition, progressive farmers were identified for early adoption of the technology so that they could become champions of the technology once the benefits were made obvious. Demo farms were created in conjunction with these progressive farmers so that other farmers could “touch and see” the benefits of new technologies for themselves.

Numerous other operational level issues such as dealing effectively with distributed farmers and farms, getting farmers to sign up for Joint Liability Groups which involved mutual trust, shared risk and collective decision making, changing the mindset of farmers so that farming was treated as a scientific profession rather than economic drudgery, transitioning farmers away from conventional and traditional method of cultivation to modern scientific methods and finding reliable partners for implementing the Last Mile Connectivity with the farmers were encountered. These were solved through various innovative means such as farmer “clustering”, novel methods of classroom and on-field training involving multi-media and ICT technologies such as “gamification” to “hook” the farmers, introducing the farmers to key Department of Agriculture and Horticulture initiatives, which were hitherto unknown to them and working with reputed NGOs which were active in the field and trusted by local farmers as Last Mile Connectivity partners.

Benefits / Impact of the innovation

After two years of project implementation encompassing several crop cycles, the following benefits have been clearly substantiated. With the inclusion of more advanced technologies such as Wireless Sensor Networks, Disease Prediction Models, Weather Modelling; the impact is expected to be even more significant and tremendously alter the existing rural landscape in a positive way.

(a) Income of the rural people: The success of the PRIDE™ model is dependent upon increasing the disposable income of the member farmers. Following factors aid in increasing the income of the farmer which in turn helps in raising the standard of living. Increased production Increased farm Productivity Reduction in costs Better and cheaper access to credit Better and timely access to markets

and reliable agri-inputs Demand lead diversification leading to

year-round employment(b) Environment conservation: The holistic

approach to agriculture promoted by the PRIDE™ ensures that environmentally friendly techniques such as vermi-composting, Panchakavya. Gomutra, neem based pesticides are advocated. Only when the situation demands are chemicals used which in turn leads to a reduction in input costs. Biological control, integrated pest management and optimal use of nutrients are promoted thorough soil testing and analysis in the PRIDE™ under implementation, CHPCL. The technology platform enables the capture of all field information due to which accounting and planning for environmental factors becomes possible. It also enables tracking the Organic stature of a farm.

(c) Traceability and Certification:The introduction of the mKRISHI® technology has made possible the tracking of all the farm operations and ensuring their


conformance to various standards set by various certification agencies. Protocols can be designed at the start of the season by the PRIDE™s so that the member farmers can easily follow the steps and be able to export for example, to more lucrative markets. This will eventually lead to the concept of Electronic Farm Records (EFR), which will usher in a revolution in the field of Agriculture, Food Processing and other allied industries.

Next Steps

The PRIDE™ model is designed to be scaled across the country, devoid of the dependencies including geographical location or the crop under cultivation or other agricultural concepts. The model isstrategically framed to demonstrate the potential and capability of collective Trading and Procurement with the power of technology.

The scalability of the innovation cuts across various fronts. In terms of technology, the architecture has been designed to handle millions of transactions. Active research is on-going to make the system, including the infrastructure, even more robust so that the response time can be further reduced.

On the operations and business front, at a micro-level, the mKRISHI® platform enables scale-up in terms of the number of farmers serviced by each field executive. Before technology intervention, a field executive would typically service about 50 to 80 farmers on a consistent basis. This can be scaled up to about 500 farmers by following best practices and processes through the introduced mKRISHI® technology platform. At the macro level, the PRIDE™ with its well-defined processes and underlying scalable technology platform, is very much relevant for every private and cooperative enterprise in the food processing industry, dairy cooperatives, sugar cooperatives, etc. Such technology interventions would help in understanding the issues, feedback mechanism, timely interventions, infusing professional management, for willing organizations.

As this framework penetrates, the Geographical distribution challenge would no longer exist and farmers from Surat can communicate with the experts at Chandigarh for advisory and trading

with the entire database available at the flash of the screen. All the PRIDE™s can be linked together through the platform so that a PRIDE™ in UP which specializes in lettuce can sell its produce to a consumer in Chennai. This would facilitate the creation of a Food Grid and dramatically alter the rural landscape in India over the next 10 years. Food wastages and spoilage can be reduced and the supply chain imbalances such as glut and famine which are playing havoc with farmers’ lives can be smoothened. The fostering of economically vibrant PRIDE™s across the country would enable them to act as nuclei within rural communities for economic job creation, market linkages and enhancement of bargaining power. This would lead to “Smart Villages”wherein predictive data analytics is used for decision making. Agriculture can reassert its rightful place in the Indian economy and help the GDP grow by double digits. This would lead to a better standard of living in rural communities and stop the present-day mindless urban migration and the subsequent squeezing to the hilt of the already constrained urban resources.

References:

[1] Indian Agriculture – Status, Importance and Role in Indian Economy - Kekane Maruti Arjun – International Journal of Agriculture and Food Science Technology, Volume 4, Number 3: http://www.ripublication.com/ijafst_spl/ijafstv4n4spl_11.pdf

[2] The Concept of PRIDE™ - “Empowering Farmers to Live with Pride”- Srini P, CSI Communications, Nov 2013: www.csi-india.org/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=f40f1366-7bbc-4fe9-8ee5-3695c99be71b&groupId=10157

[3] TCS Innovation Labs – Digital Farming Initiative – Internal Documents and Reports


Exploiting Data for supporting developing countries

Sandra Kalidien and Sunil Choenni

Ministry of Security and Justice,

Research and Documentation Centre,Statistical Information and Policy analysis

The Hague, The Netherlands

[email protected]

[email protected]

INTRODUCTION

The developments in communication and information technologies (e.g., Internet use and mobile devices) have experienced an explosive growth in recent years in developed as well as in developing countries. It is reported by the UN that in Africa almost 20 percent of the population are online, up from 10 percent in 2010. In 2014, Internet use in developing countries grew by almost 10 percent, about twice as fast as it did in the developed world [The Millenium Development Goals 2014 report]. The expectation is that the number of people with Internet use and mobile devices will grow further in the coming years. Nowadays, mobile devices are used for various purposes. Besides voice communications, mobile devices are used to share information/knowledge via applications, such as SMS services, Whatsapp,and Facebook.Recent technological developments of mobile devices have made it easier to involve citizens in collecting data, also known as ‘crowdsourcing’. By collecting data by means of crowdsourcing, governments connect with the common mass by acquiring information quickly and learningthe issues that affect day-to-day life of citizens. The potential of ‘crowdsourcing’should not be underestimated, especially in developing countries, where the mobile network is growing rapidly. Although crowdsourcing has already had a strong impact in developing countries, for example, in Haiti and Pakistan this approach has been used to coordinate crisis governance work after natural disasters, crowdsourcing and mobile technology

may also play a role in important developmental goals such as safety and health issues. In this article, we explore how the growth of data by means of modern information and communication technologies such as mobile devices, can be further exploited by developing countries.

POSSIBILITIES AND BENEFITTINGOF DATA GROWTH

The increased availability of mobile devices and emerging technologies has been encouraging or a lot of projects where data is collected digitally. This data can be used for various applications and purposes. For instance, with the application called ‘Burgerschouw’,which was developed in 2012 by a private company for a municipal in the Netherlands. Currently, ‘Burgerschouw’ is deployed in eight municipals in the Netherlands, and has about 250 users. Citizens can rate various aspects of their district, e.g., litter, the condition of trees, verges and streets. While inspecting their district, citizens may rate an aspect of their district as fair, high and low. To help a citizen with the interpretation of the ratings, examples of the ratings are given by means of pictures. For example, the app gives pictures of what should be understood under a healthy tree (good), an average healthy tree (fair), and an ill tree (low). Valuable information can be received by analyzing the data that the citizens have provided by means of this app. Governmental organizations may take advantage of this data to obtain insight in certain phenomena. This insight may support policy and decision - making. For instance, suppose the data shows that there are many reports of ill trees in a certain district of the municipal. With this information, policymakers of the municipal may react by conducting a research about why there are so many ill trees in this district. The research may reveal that there are toxic waste dumps inthis district. As a consequence the municipal may decide to take measures for this illegal practice.

In these examples, citizens are aware of their role as data collectors and actively perform this role. Today, users download and use apps that are equipped with several tracing and logging functionalities, without exactly knowing which data


these applications collect and pass to which entities. Governmental organizations and businesses take advantage of the availability of huge amount of data by exploiting these data and in turn develop new apps to encourage better and smart governance of its citizens. For example, in the energy sector, energy suppliers can anticipate and influence the future energy consumption by introducing apps that make citizens aware of their energy consumption. Such apps may recommend users to turn off the heating system if the app notes that nobody will be at home for a while. Furthermore, these apps can be tailored to simulate as if people are at home while they are actually on holiday. A functionality as this might be useful to minimize the risk of a burglary when people are not at home.

Other examples where data is collected digitally, include the Pothole Patrol where sensor data submitted by smartphones is used to assess road quality,and the Copenhagen Wheel which was developed by MIT students back in 2009and sponsored by the mayor of Copenhagen. In the Copenhagen Wheel sensors were attached to city bicycles to submit data about pollution, road conditions and congestionsCurrently, a commercial version of the Copenhagen Wheel is available to the general public in several countries. Yet another example is data mining of uploaded photos to map tourist movement and so on.

Many more examples are to think of where data is collected digitally and in turn is exploited to encourage better and smart governance of citizens.

TAILORING EXISTING APPSFOR ADDRESSING DEVELOPMENT ISSUES

Since citizens of developing countries are using modern information and communication technologies such as internet and mobile devices more and more, and thus also (passively) produce a huge amount of data in a relatively easy way, governments in developing countries should anticipate on these ICT developments and exploit the possibilities of data growth for their own specific issues, like safety or health issues. But how can governments effectively take advantage of the

data to improve development issues? We argue that this may be obtained by tailoring existing apps to the specific needs of a country or a district of a country and by involving citizens in a more active way in the process of data collection. For example, an application like ‘Burgerschouw’ can be tailored to report about unsafe districts in a country instead of reporting about some aspects of trees. Citizens may be requested to report about safety issues in a specific area. These safety issues may differ for various countries and areas.

For example, in some countries, such as the US, the selling and use of alcoholic beverages in public is subjected to severe rules and regulations and also to strict enforcement, to counteract nuisance. These rules and regulations of alcohol use may be less severe in developing countries. Also, there may be less enforcement in these countries. Streets with crowded stands and alcohol sale may be considered as unsafe since it may lead to nuisance or even harassment and violence, especially during the evenings. In a tailored version of an application such as ‘Burgerschouw’, citizens may be requested to collect information by means of their mobile devices about whether it is crowded or not at stands, whether there is nuisance, enough lightning at night, broken roads, violent incidents,and so on. Having insight in these kinds of data collected by citizens,can in turn be used for several purposes by governmental organizations. For instance, the data may show there is not enough lightning in an area. Governmental organizations may use this information to place more lampposts in an area such that citizens who are traveling at night may feel safer.Or in case that the data shows a lot of violence and harassments in certain areas, the government may decide to raise additional surveillance or place (more) cameras in these areas.

Commercial organizations may use these data to develop apps to compute safe routes from place A to place B at real-time. Such organizations should augment journey planners with the data about e.g., broken roads, lightening, crowded alcoholic stands, and harassments; and combine it with area maps to compute safe roads. Suppose that someone likes to travel in India from Nehru University to Meena


Bazar, then several routes are possible to travel. Which route is the best depends on the criteria that are applied to make a choice, e.g. a safe, fast, or sight-seeing trip. If a safe trip is chosen as criterion by the user then such an app will select a route where the streetlamps are working at night, the roads are in good or reasonable conditions and crowded alcoholic stands are avoided as much as possible.

NECESSITY OF GOOD DATA QUALITY

The success of apps like these depends on the quality of the data that is submitted by citizens. Therefore, citizens of developing countries should particularly be made aware of the importance of their role in data collection. Our opinion is that governments should promote the relevance and importance of the role of citizens as data collectorsf or their own and country’s concerns. To obtain good data quality, guidelines should be developed that help citizens to rate the quality of the data before submitting the data. These guidelines should be about standardized methods, but also about supporting and providing tutorials for citizens as data collectors to ensure data credibility. Above this, the acknowledgement by (governmental) authorities for the effort of data collection by citizens, should be taken into account since this can act as an important motivator to involve citizens as data collectors. Moreover, this acknowledgement may also help to build better relationships between (governmental) organizations and citizens through joint fact-finding.

Datasets of good quality can give important insights in several phenomena as indicated by a few examples mentioned above. By having these insights, governments may adequately take action to tackle important developmental issues to ensure better and good governance for their citizens.However, although huge datasets can be produced by digital data collection and new insights in phenomena can be obtained, the privacy of individuals should be taken into account at all time, as such that violation of privacy of individuals is prevented.

LEARNING FROM DATA OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Having datasets of good quality of developmental issues is not only of benefit for developing countries, but can also be useful for other countries. For instance, diabetes is a big health issue in developing countries, but it is also known as one of the health issues in other countries. It is reported, for example, that India and China have the highest number of people with diabetes in the world [report European Comission: The conference Diabesity – A World-Wide Challenge: Towards a global initiative on environment interactions in diabetes/obesity in specific populations, 9 and 10 February 2012 in Brussels].In the Netherlands diabetes is one of the biggest chronical diseases, where nearly one million people have diabetes.

Studies have revealed that there is a high correlation between food and diabetes. By means of apps that collect data about different kinds of foodas well as eating behavior, valuable datasets may be obtained. An app that collects data about food and eating behavior, for instance, is the Dutch ‘Eetmeter’app. This app is developed by the Netherlands Nutrition Centre and gives personal dietary advice, on basis of age, weight, eating behavior and kinds of food. A user of this app may add information about what he/she eats a day. With this information, the app immediately shows whether you eat to many calories. Also the app shows whether your nutrition intake is sufficiently. A person can use this kind of information to hold a grip on his/her eating behavior and in turn minimize the risk to develop obesity. Currently, there are about a couple of hundred users.

By tailoring, and subsequently deploying apps like this for countries such as India and China, and also by adding other data, for example blood sugar levels and the extent of exercise a day, valuable datasets may be obtained. The collected datasets might be used in different ways. One way is that these countries themselves use the datasets to get new insights in this disease and other related phenomena. For example, by splitting the datasets


in obese and thin people, new insights may be obtained in how the eating behavior differs between these two groups in relation to the blood sugar level.

Another way is, that these datasets might be shared with other countries. By sharing and making these datasets available for other countries, these countries may benefit as well from these datasets for their own research purposes. For example, there is a huge population of Chinese people in Surinam. It is observed that the Chinese population in Surinam are becoming more obese over the recent years and thus having an increased risk of developing diabetes. These Chinese people immigrated to Surinam a while ago. As a consequence of this immigration, their eating behavior and kind of foods have changed through the years, since the foods in Surinam are different from the foods in China. Suppose that data of these people with regard to variables such as age, weight, eating behavior, kinds of foods and blood sugar level etc. are also collected in Surinam. Then this dataset may be compared with the dataset shared with China on various variables. Cross examinations of the different datasets may expose the role of food and eating behavior in more detail. For instance, by comparing the obese Chinese people of Surinam, with the thin people in China, it may show that a certain type of food eaten in Surinam is accountable for increasing the risk of developing diabetes under the Chinese people in Surinam. With this kind of information, the diet of the Chinese people in Surinam may be adapted in order to minimize the risk of developing diabetes. In this way developing countries may add value to research purposes for different countries.

CONCLUSIONS

The development in the field of ICT has opened doors for huge data collections. In order to take advantage of the huge data collections, research and development evolves in different directions, which are not necessarily divergent. We have set ourselves the question how developing and developed countries may share best practices to benefit from the explosive growth of data due to

ICT- developments. We argue that existing apps can be tailored and fed by data to solve problems, such as safety issues, in specific countries. Furthermore, we stress the importance of sharing datasets amongst different countries. Data sharing contributes to a better understanding of emerging phenomena on our planet.

Exploring The Design And Development Of The Electronic Government (E-Government) Applications Landscape In South Africa

Dr Shawren SINGHSenior Lecturer

School of Computing, University of South Africa,Pretoria

mailto:[email protected]

Udo Richard AVERWEGIT Project Manager

Information Management Unit, eThekwini Municipality and University of

KwaZulu-Natal, Durbanmailto:[email protected]

IntroductionInformation and communication technology (ICT) is playing an increasingly and significant role in the delivery of information and services for a connected society. As in the case in the business sector, governments are making efforts in seeking to make effective and efficient delivery of government and services. Creating a connected society means utilising technology to deliver public information and services (Averweg, 2015).The Internet-driven activity that improves citizens’ access to government information and services is known as electronic government (e-Government) (Yang & Rho, 2007). In order to achieve the objective of making effective and efficient delivery of government and services, one item on the agenda of many governments is transforming the conventional manual ways of


delivering information and services by adopting ICT. Such conventional manual ways may require a redesign and development so that the adoption of e-Government is fostered. e-Government is an important measure towards an effective posting of government information and the delivery of public services for citizens and business for improved service delivery.

Research into e-Government offers opportunities for exploring how the design and development of information systems can be improved in order to allow government applications to be more efficiently and effectively implemented. While South Africa has risen to the challenge of improving government service delivery through the use of ICT, two salient questions arise:

What are some of the current e-Government challenges facing South Africa?; and

What are some considerations for the design and development of e-Government applications to meet expectations of stakeholders who have an investment in such applications?

Exploring both questions in the South African landscape is the objective of this article.

Our article is structured as follows:The challenge of e-Government is introduced. We then discuss ICT in South Africa. This is followed with some examples of problems with e-Government applications in South Africa. We then discuss making e-Government ‘work’. Lastly some concluding remarks are given.

The challenge of e-GovernmentGovernments are being faced with a number of challenges which are due to the increase in the size of the population as well as a demand from citizens for more efficient and effective services (Tapscott, 2010). Citizens in many parts of the world are aware that government processes and practices (for example, accessing government information) are often in need of modernisation. Delays, duplication and waste, have led to increased costs, which are considered to be the hallmarks of government services (Cloete, 2012; Heerden &Rossouw, 2014). It is generally felt that

it is time for these inefficiencies to be addressed, facilitated by the deployment of ICT. At the core of electronic government is data. Its effective collection, management, posting and use are central to the effective administration and the delivery of efficient services. ICT, used appropriately with organisational transformation, has been found to improve efficiency and effectiveness in the private sector and this has led to a demand for the application of this technology in the public sector in the form of e-Government. This has been the case since the mid-1990s, and from that date there has been growing enthusiasm for the use of e-Government, as it is perceived as not only offering a greater level of efficiency to government, but also engaging citizens by promoting information access. This should lead to faster services that are more cost-effective. The increased availability of information is seen as one dimension of citizen-centricity. e-Government is therefore seen as a major step towards citizen-centricity (Bannister, 2000). By their nature e-Government applications are extensive in their scale. In many cases, government delivers services to large numbers of people and over a considerable geographic area. This means that powerful computers connected by high speed data communications are necessary. Sophisticated systems developers are required. As government systems are based on confidential and personal data, special security arrangements and protocols are necessary. Further, e-Government systems have important implications in the lives of individuals, therefore thorough testing is required.These tests are expensive to perform. The on-going cost of operating these systems is considerable. In short, e-Government is expensive and this represents a problem in the public sector where resources are increasingly scarce.

It is interesting to note that it was estimated that in 2013 worldwide investment in ICT would be $3.8 trillion (Rivera &Goasduff, 2013), with e-Government being one of the most rapidly growing sectors, consuming an important proportion of this sum of money. There are problems with expenditure on e-Government, as Heeks (2011) pointed out when he said: ‘If e-government is so great at cutting costs , how come my taxes haven’t gone down? In general, governments have been consuming larger portions of the national income and many people believe that the payments made by the citizens, i.e. their taxes, should either be reduced or at least


curtailed. To make matters more difficult for those advocating eGovernment, there have been a number of high profile failures. But it is important to state that the application of ICT has never been straightforward and throughout the nearly 70 years that computers have been available, there is a long history of poor investment decisions in all the industrial sectors in which this technology has been applied (Robertson, 2008; Al-Ahmad et al., 2009). In this context, poor investment decisions have not only been in situations where there has been an inadequate return on investment, but also include incidents where ICT applications failed to work or caused considerable disruption to the organizations attempting to apply the technology (Mitev, 1996; Heeks, 2002a, 2002c; Belardo et al., 2004; Gauld& Goldfinch, 2006). e-Government applications are no exception (De Brí& Bannister, 2010; Uusikylä, 2013). Estimates of the extent of e-Government failures range considerably. The New Zealand government lost a modest $17 million on ICT for health care, when it purchased an American developed ICT system designed to manage health information and then abandoned the system within two years (Gauld & Goldfinch, 2006).The Irish government spent an estimated €156 million on a Health Services Administration system called PPARS and obtained no return on the investment (Comptroller and Auditor General, 2005). But in the United Kingdom where government services are much larger, the National Health Service wasted an estimated $24.5 billion on an ICT healthcare system which they were not able to implement successfully (Heeks, 2007).

ICT in South AfricaBefore considering South Africa’s e-Government, it is important to point out that South Africa has traditionally been a leader in the application of ICT in business and industry. From the 1960s, most if not all the major international vendors of computers and associated technologies established significant market presence in South Africa and computerisation became a prominent theme in many organisations, including government. The use of computers by the South African government has a long history and not all applications were necessarily in the interest of the citizens. In a number of instances, the South African government used computers to enforce apartheid laws. In fact, by some accounts, the South African Government has been the largest user of computers in the country especially if the

parastatal organisations such as ESKOM, South African Railways and Harbours (SAR&H) and ISCOR are included. It was therefore inevitable that the South African Government would follow world trends and devote considerable resources to e-Government. The South African Government’s use of computers has not always been successful. There are considerable challenges related to infrastructure, expertise, and demographics. The implementation of e-Government in South Africa has had to contend with a number of specific challenges. These included: a high level of digital illiteracy and financial inequality, a relatively weak ICT infrastructure, and a general lack of government’s ICT preparedness. In addition, as an African country, there are other more pressing demands on the public service such as access to potable water and electricity, which made ICT development a lower priority in budgetary terms (Trusler, 2003).

The machinery of the previous government used ICT extensively to monitor and control people’s movement (Edwards & Hecht, 2010). Pre-1994 the South African government’s ICT systems were not geared for a democratic society. There is little consolidated information available with regard to the progress and current practices of e-Government in South Africa (Trusler, 2003).

Some examples of problems with e-Government applications in South AfricaDurban Metropolitan Municipality in 1999 spent an estimated $1 million on a project to provide Web-based community and council information (Community Information Link) to the residents of Durban; by 2002 the project had failed (Heeks, 2002b). The Health Information System Programme (HISP) was launched in 2000; this initiative was intended to reform healthcare in South Africa’s public sector. The project partially failed due to high cost (Braa&Hedberg, 2000a, 2000b). ‘Golaganang’ (meaning ‘come together’) was a project launched 2002. It was a joint initiative between the South African government and the private sector to provide civil servants with affordable personal ICT. The estimated cost of the project was $80 million, and the project failed in the same year (Levin, 2002; The Institute for Public-Private Partnerships, 2009).

Thakur &Singh (2012) report that in 2003 eThekwini Municipality launched the eThekwini Revenue Management System (RMS)


at an estimated cost of ZAR250m(INR1,400m approx)and the costs have escalated to more than ZAR474m(INR2,650m approx). In 2012, the eThekwini Municipality contracted the services of an independent risk assurer, at a cost of ZAR1m(INR5,5mapprox), to review the work that had been done on the RMS. The independent risk assurer recommended that the development of the RMS should proceed. During 2014 the RMS development project has been plagued with data migration issues.The Johannesburg City Council is experiencing similar challenges with its ICT services, causing both business and citizens to engage in legal action over poor services, such as inconsistent bills and disrupted services. A set of touch-screen kiosks were installed for remote rural communities in South Africa’s North-West Province. These were initially well received. However, the kiosks’ lack of current or local content and lack of interactivity led to disuse, and the kiosks were removed less than one year later (Heeks, 2008).

In 2007, the electronic National Traffic Information System (eNaTIS) was implemented. One month after its implementation, it was reported that the Auditor-General warned the Department of Transport that the eNaTIS system was flawed and that there was an 80 percent chance of eNaTIS failing. The department, however, went ahead and installed the ZAR408m (INR2,270mapprox)system. This caused the country’s vehicle licensing process to stop. In that same year, a High Court found that eNaTIS posed a security risk in terms of the confidentiality of citizens’ data. Passwords were not administered adequately and ‘security patches’ were not installed appropriately. Although the eNaTIS system has now been operational for five years, it still does not offer complete client satisfaction (Rajapakse et al., 2012). In 2009, the State President launched the Presidential Hotline for citizens to log complaints. The launch led to a flood of calls, stimulating a denial-of-service attack (Thakur & Singh, 2012). These examples suggest that South Africa has not made a great success of some of their e-Government initiatives. It further suggests that in different parts of the country the government has failed to successfully implement e-Government systems. This view is supported by the United Nations e-Government surveys (Hafeez, 2003, 2004, 2005; Hafeez et al., 2008; Kerby et al., 2010; Hafeez et al., 2012;

UNPAN, 2014). South Africa has been slipping in the e-Government applications league.

Year RankedMember

StatesRanking as a %

Trend

2003 45 191 242004 55 191 29 ↓2005 58 191 30 ↓2008 61 192 32 ↓2010 97 192 51 ↓2012 101 193 52 ↓2014 93 193 48 ↑

Table 1. South Africa’s ranking in the UN e-Government developments index (Adapted from Hafeez, 2003, 2004, 2005; Hafeez et al., 2008; Kerby et al., 2010; Hafeez et al., 2012; UNPAN, 2014)

Table 1 shows that the overall consistent trend is that South Africa is falling lower in the e-Government ranking. In 2003 South Africa was ranked 45 out of 191 member states, which was a reasonable level for a country of its size and resources. By 2014, South Africa was ranked 93 out of 193 member states. Though South Africa is investing in government ICT initiatives, it seems that the investments are not realising the expected benefits (The Department of Communication, 2012, 2014).

A closer inspection of the components that are used to construct the e-Government ranking reveal that the components have behaved inconsistently over the years. The components are online services, infrastructure, and human capital, as displayed in Table 2.


Table 2.South Africa’s e-Government development componentsas per the UN e-Government survey (Adapted from Hafeez, 2003, 2004, 2005; Hafeez et al., 2008; Kerby et al., 2010; Hafeez et al., 2012; UNPAN, 2014)

Online services component can be measured by the country’s national websites such as National Central Portal, e-Services portal and e-Participation portal, as well as the websites of the related ministries of education, labour, social services, health, finance, and environment as applicable. The infrastructure component is an assessment of the ICT infrastructure of the country: it estimates the number of Internet users per 100 inhabitants, the number of main fixed telephone lines per 100 inhabitants, the number of mobile subscribers per 100 inhabitants, the number of fixed internet subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, and number of fixed broadband facilities per 100 inhabitants. The human capital component is an assessment of the literacy of the citizens in the country. Each component will be discussed.

Online services are affected by cultural, language and social diversity issues. When seeking services from the government, some South Africa citizens

prefer interacting with people and not with a computer. This is because of the complex nature of the South African government bureaucracy as well as the language barriers in the country.Such issues contribute to creating a suitability divide (Guomundsdottir, 2005) that affects e-Government initiatives. A suitability divide is characterised by cultural issues such as language and social diversity.

When considering infrastructure, the Department of Communication has several ongoing initiatives to develop ICT infrastructure. However, there have been many challenges such as instability within the Department of Communication , leadership gaps and challenges with strategic oversight by the Department of Communication (The Department of Communication, 2012, 2014). Another dimension of South Africa’s e-Government involvement may be seen in Figure 1 which presents the Internet usage and population statistics for South Africa (Internet World Stats, 2014). From year 2000 to year 2012, the usage of the Internet in South Africa was low. In 2013 the Internet usage increased significantly. However, this is still a relatively slow growth to the Internet user base, and it is reasonable to assume there is a material divide (Guomundsdottir, 2005).Material divides are characterised by poor access to costly technology - this type of divide affects e-Government initiatives.

Figure 1.Internet Usage in South Africa(Internet World Stats, 2014)(No data was available for years 2006, 2007, 2010 and 2011). the South African education system to be more inclusive and accessible to all citizens. There are, however, several gaps in the education system which are related to learners who have not acquire functional numeracy and literacy skills. There are also inequalities of educational


outcomes amongst the different schools; there are challenges with the level of qualification of primary school mathematics teachers and there are challenges associated with retention-to-matriculation (van der Berg et al., 2011; Spaull, 2013). These educational gaps led to utilisation divides (Guomundsdottir, 2005). Utilisation dividesarecharacterised by a lack of basic computer skills. This in turn has a knock-on effect on the adoption of e-Government services.

Online services, infrastructure and human capital are important indicators that e-Government applications in South Africa have not reached a level of stability. However, the issue described above concerning e-Government is only one aspect of the greater problems relating to the use of ICT in government. In 2012 the Auditor-General of South Africa reported:

‘The majority of departments and public entities experiences challenges with the design and implementation of information technology (IT) controls that provide assurance on the confidentiality , integrity and availability of financial information.’ (Auditor –general South Africa , 2012). The opinion of the Auditor General provides an unambiguous statement on the important issues which South African e-Government initiatives are faced.Making e-Government ‘work’e-Government application design and development is at the heart of any e-Government initiative, because during the design process it is decided what is offered to the citizens and how it will be of value to the citizens. Such value includes the effective posting of government information and the delivery of public services for citizens and business. The design of e-Government applications is a challenging issue because the applications are frequently large, complex, require large sums of money, the system’s objective can be difficult to define, senior government officials who do not have adequate ICT expertise sometime interfere, and they have a fairly wide range of stakeholders that need to feel that the e-Government application is providing some form of benefit for them. Furthermore, unlike many other ICT applications, e-Government is often conducted under public scrutiny. When mistakes are made in e-Government applications, they tend to be expensive, impact large numbers of citizens and

they tend to be embarrassing to civil servants and politicians. Significant importance should therefore be placed on initiatives to transform existing service delivery paradigms to cater for ICT (Averweg, 2015).

e-Government requires adequate online services, infrastructure and human capital, but even if all of these are in place there is still the issue of making individual systems work and that depends on how government designers design, develop and implement the systems.

Concluding remarksThere are frequent yearly public commitments by successive South African presidents to provide e-Government services in their state of the nation addresses (State of the Nation Addresses 2010, 2011, 2012), but these commitments are partially realised as government is constrained by limited resources and appropriate skills. It is argued that the government promises e-Government services because some citizens are engaged in violent, fatal protests demanding improved service delivery (Alexander, 2010). These services delivery protests are interpreted as citizens wanting more effective and efficient service delivery, while there are promises that e-Government programs will lead to more effective and efficient service delivery.

In the South African environment, we have also noted some considerations for the design and development of e-Government applications to meet expectations of stakeholders who have an investment in such applications. Moodley (2005)claims that exclusive emphasis is being placed on ICT projects, "at the expense of careful analysis and consideration of the broader economic, social, and political elements that interact to improve the lives of individuals". Moodley (2005)and Singh (2010) further claim that there are several gaps in policy, gaps in understanding of ICT, gaps in understanding social process, bureaucratic incompetence, and gaps in understanding "independent human agency3", that have an effect on e-Government.

In summary, we discussed some of the current e-Government challenges facing South Africa. It

3 In this context, independent human agency refers to people’s spontaneous reactions to events. It is a challenge to understand these reactions.


appears that e-Government applications do not achieve desired results because the actual problem that an e-Government application is meant to address, may never have been well-described or well-defined, or the e-Government application is seen as the solution to the problem, and not as a tool to assist in the solving of the problem. With an absence of current theories or models to describe, explain and outline how e-Government applications can (and should) be optimally designed and optimally developed to meet the expectations of various stakeholders that have an investment, in the e-Government application, further investigation is required. In order to optimise the acceptance of e-Government applications, it is strongly suggested that further research be encouragedto explore the design and development of e-Government applications in South Africa. This will serve to respond to the challenge of improving government service delivery to citizens and business through the use of ICT.

AcknowledgementText has been extracted and adapted from Chapter One of the first author’s doctoral thesis titled Towards understanding the process of e-Government application design in South Africa(Singh, 2014).

Suggested further reading

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Heeks, R. (2002c). Success/Failure Case Study No.24: The National Data Bank Project: An Expensive Lesson for Bangladesh. Retrieved 25 July, 2011, from http://www.egov4dev.org/success/case/ndb.shtml

Heeks, R. (2007). eGovernment Failure and Political Timescales: iGovernment Briefing No. 8, Development Informatics Group, University of Manchester.

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Rajapakse, J., Van Der Vyver, A., &Hommes, E. (2012).e-Government Implementations in Developing Countries: Success and Failure, Two Case Studies. Paper presented at the 2012 IEEE 6th International Conference on Information and Automation for Sustainability (ICIAfS), Beijing.

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Conference Announcements

eLearning Africa: 10th International Conferenceon ICT for Development, Education & Training

Addis Ababa , Ethiopia, May 20-22, 2015

eLearning Africa is the key networking event for ICT enhanced education and training in Africa. As the largest annual conference of its kind, the three-day event is a must for those wanting to develop multinational and cross-industry partnerships and contacts whilst enhancing their knowledge, expertise and abilities.In 2015, eLearning Africa is being hosted by the Ethiopian Ministry of CIT at the African Union Conference Centre.Please visit http://www.elearning-africa.com/index.php for further details.

14th IFIP Electronic Government (EGOV) and 7th

Electronic Participation (ePart) Conference 2015

30th August - 3rd September 2015University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece

The annual international IFIP EGOV conference is the top-2 ranked core conference in the domain of ICT in the public sector and the public sphere.


Each year, scholars from all over the globe present the most recent advancements and findings of research and innovations in e-Government, e-Governance and related fields of study.Visit http://www.egov-conference.org/egov-2015for more details.

Editorial

I have experienced slow progress and poor design of systems in otherwise reasonably developed states like Gujarat. The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation which runs 22 computerized Civic Centers for delivery of municipal services, issues death certificates in Gujarati as a hand written document across the counter. It takes 2 months to enter data in a back room operation at the central office. If one wanted a certificate in English it is generated by the computerized front offices after 2 months. The classic principle of process reform -to capture data once and at source is completely flouted. Information on how such certificates can be obtained is incomplete on the web site. One gets different answers if an enquiry is made in the civic centers.

Very few projects define indicators for measuring success at the stage of conceptualization. Post implementation audit from a citizen perspective is rare. Yet, many research studies make quick judgements on success/failure and offer simple explanations for failed and successful projects,whereas the reality may be a lot more complex.

The task of building capacity to design and implement system is huge as it involves some training for the entire government work force. We need more empirical research and online courses which are practice oriented. Often in countries at the lower end of ICT enabled service delivery,technocrats spend far too much time in debating strategies and policies and generate very little ground implementation of projects. (continued from page 1)

The IFIP WG 9.4 Newsletter Website

The Information Technology in Developing CountriesNewsletter has been published by Prof. Subhash Bhatnagar (Founding Chairman of IFIP WG 9.4) through the support of various agencies such as IDRC and COMNET-IT in the past. Since 1999, the Newsletter has been published as a joint publication of IFIP WG 9.4 and the Centre for E-Governance (CEG), Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA).

A legacy of 10 years of print circulation to its credit, this newsletter has been published on the web for more than a decade.

The next issue of the newsletter will be published in June 2012. For archives, subscription details and guidelines for contributions, please visit the Newsletter website:http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/egov/ifip/wg.htm

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