Shwetank Dixit

So I came back to India on the 25th night at 11 PM and I had a flight to Hyderabad for e-india 2009 next morning at 6:20 AM. I hadn't slept properly the night before, when I flew from Oslo to Delhi, and now had to stay awake all night once again

Once I reached Hyderabad, it took me 1.5 hours to reach my hotel, and then a further 1.5 hours to reach the hotel venue....needless to say I was sleep deprived and thoroughly exhausted!

Fortunately, E-India 2009 turned out to be one of the best organized conferences I've been to, and the Hyderabad International Convention Center probably the best place to have a large scale conference in India. I ended up listening to a lot of people, and talking to them many of them afterwards as well. This conference was different than most others I have been to, mainly because this one focused a heavily on the public sector.

For once, we got to see what stuff the Government is doing regarding IT, and what plans do they have for the future. There was a large presence of NIC (National Informatics Centre) as well, from all parts of India, but especially Delhi and Orissa, and it was nice to meet them, especially Mrs Neeta Verma who is doing a great job there at NIC. It was encouraging to finally hear from someone in the government that infrastructure issues aside, the main concern when it comes to web services working properly has to do with how they are designed and coded. I'm also quite pleased with the efforts already underway in making existing government websites (which are quite old and badly coded) more up to date and standards compliant. I especially asked her the status regarding the website of the ministry of social justice, and she said that efforts are already underway to make all these sites comply with the latest guidlines they have come up with for government websites (these are very much in line with WCAG, which is a good thing!).

Ravi Khullar, from the MC department of Gurgaon, had a short but quite fun talk on how he planned to make sure municipal complaints get handled and the process of resolving these issues streamlined. An overwhelming trend amoingst all the speakers who were from Government was that they realized how painfull process are right now, and are also aware of how much of an impact IT can make in improving these issues. One challenge all IT secreteries from all the states were facing was to convince various other departments to co-operate with them properly in implementing IT in their departments. Usually they did it by saying that the IT departments role is only to facilitate their job, not to take over it. Using IT, the various state departments can actually do their job easier and more effectively, and it is a win win situation for all involved - the state departments, the IT department and the people of the state.

However, one talk I really enjoyed came from the Police department of Hyderabad. Dr. Praveen Kumar, DIG and Joint Director, Andhra Pradesh Police Academy, talked on how they used IT in fighting crime and effective policing. He talked about how they had set up a special wing just for IT related cases quite a long time ago, and also the challenges faced by him in implementing IT in the police department, especially consdering the fact that policework on the streets is something which policemen plan just from day to day. Weeklong or monthlong scheduling is not heard of really, as policemen only get to know where their next duty is and where the bandobast is supposed to be only some time in advance.

He also went on in saying that besides analyzing Internet(he mentioned how even now, scores are people are falling to nigerian scams sent as spam, and other similar frauds perpetrated by others) and credit card fraud - stolen mobiles are also now much easier to track, even if the person is using another SIM. However, the best thing to know for me, was the service in which they went ahead and installed terror alerts as caller tunes to whomever was calling to their number. This IMO, was a very nice idea.

My overall impression of e-India 2009 was that it was the venue was great and it was a slickly organized event (apart from the fact that some of the speakers did not have time at all to speak as others had overrun their time limit...and some senior guests failed to show up, or turned up late). The people who came were of very senior positions amongst some very important institutions. However, I wish that these people would interact more with people who are not in their immediate circle. Most people there, seemed like they had come with their own group of friends or colleagues, and ended up chatting with themselves, or with just a select few. On the bright side, it was heartening to know the resolve and enthusiasm of parts of the Indian bureaucracy whom are so highly motivated to make sure things get streamlined with IT.