Iimahmd Newsletter

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES IFIP WG 9.4

A Newsletter of the International Federation for Information Processing Working Group 9.4 and Centre for Electronic Governance Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad

Volume 19, No. 3, October 2009

WEB VERSION http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/egov/i fip/wg.htm EDITOR Subhash Bhatnagar [email protected] ASSOCIATE EDITOR Nupur Uday Singh [email protected] EDITORIAL OFFICE Center for Electronic Governance Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad - 380 015, India. Phone: +91 79 6632 4128 http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/egov/

Editorial Welcome to the third and last issue of 2009. Once again there is optimism in the air as some of the gloom of the economic melt down is fading away. We carry some articles that reflect optimism about using technology for those who need to be helped the most. There is an article about an HIV help line, use of SMS for building communities and another on transliteration for blind people. Anuradha Parekh from the editorial office has written one of these articles. We will miss Anuradha as she is no longer working with us. I must acknowledge her success in reviving the interest amongst our community to contribute to this newsletter. Over the last few months I have been involved in a capacity building exercise supported by the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) of India. Several 2-3 day workshops have been conducted for political executives (ministers and legislators) from different states in India by the National Institute of Smart Governance. Participants spend two half-days in a classroom listening to speakers and two half-days in the field (in Hyderabad) visiting a few e-government delivery centers and the State Data Center. I usually deliver two sessions- one on sharing the results of a study on citizen impact of e-government projects, and the other on reaching e-government services to rural populations. After my first hand experience in interacting with a large number of ministers and legislators from ten states in India, I have formed a very positive opinion about the current crop of political executives. A significant proportion of them are young, educated, suave and committed to developing their constituencies. The fact that ministers and legislators chose to spend eight to ten hours listening to speakers is in itself indicative of their interest in e-government and their desire to learn more. In general, the questions from the participants have been incisive, reflecting a deep understanding of development issues. (Editorial continued on the last page)

In this Issue… §

ICT for Development in Nigeria…2

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SMSONE…6

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Automatic Transliteration of Indian Language Text to Braille for the Visually Challenged in India…11

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ePanchayats…18

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What are your Kids Learning whilst you’re not Looking?...21

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Integrating HIV Information with Health and Welfare Issues…23

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Alternative Payment Mechanisms…25

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Conference Announcements…27

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ICT for Development in Nigeria Towards an Alignment with ICTD4 2.0 Goals O.B. Longe and R. Boateng International Centre for IT & Development, Southern University and A&M College, Baton Rouge, Louisiana [email protected], [email protected] Abstract A number of studies have x-rayed the potentials and impetus for development resultant from a full scale adoption of ICT in Africa in general and in Nigeria in particular. The fact that current challenges relating to infrastructure, cyber crime and government policies can slow down the benefits accruable from a virile ICT growth has also been highlighted. However, research also needs to really address possible areas of developmental benefit of ICT to rural target groups such as farmers, extension officers, health workers and social workers. At the initial stage, ICT4D1.0 promoted Internet-enabled activities that resulted in globalization, educational, technological, economic and political advantages. The second phase- ICT4D2.0 is geared towards applying ICT much more creatively and pragmatically to development problems beyond the internet-enabled PC telecenters of ICT4D1.0. This discourse explores possible alignment of ICT4D2.0 goals to ICT development in Nigeria. We posited that in Nigeria, the digital divide that ICTD1.0 sets to bridge is still very evident at the grassroots level. Our opinion is that adding computing and Internet functionality to technologies that already penetrate the grassroots such as mobiles phones, radios and televisions will enhance ICT4D2.0 goals in Nigeria. This will in turn increase productivity among this target group with attendant contribution to national development. Keywords: ICT, Nigeria, Development, Convergence, Africa, Globalization and Internet. 1. Introduction Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) is a general term referring to the application of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) within the field of socioeconomic development. ICT4D is geographically unspecific, and as such concerns itself directly with overcoming the barriers of the Digital Divide. The field, now gaining the status of being interdisciplinary can be validated by the number of conferences, workshops and publications in the field [1]-[3]. Such research has been motivated by the need for empirical results, which can be used to measure the impact of ICT4D initiatives. ICT is recognized by government, organizations, individuals and even criminals as a tool that can be used for varying degrees of achievements. ICT4D can therefore be applied either in an indirect sense, where the ICTs assist aid

organizations or non-governmental organizations or governments in order to improve socio-economic conditions or in the direct sense, where their use directly benefits the disadvantaged population in some manner. The former was more of the focus of ICT4D1.0 while ICT4D2.0 is expected to achieve the laudable goals of pragmatic and penetrative development at all levels. Unfortunately, government bureaucracy, lack of basic infrastructure, legislative and other political bottlenecks have hampered the rate of growth and penetration of ICT and its attendant development potentials in most developing countries. On the one hand, developing countries present problems that are as diverse as the cultures they encompass, and the issues fully emerge only with direct interaction with the target communities. On the other hand, many of the issues are recurring, and they often are just minor variations of challenges encountered in the developed world [4]. Developers have identified the root of several ICT4D failures as stemming from their techno centric approach, dominated by an informatics view of the world. Such projects are frequently analogous with the old medical joke, “The operation was a success but unfortunately the patient died.” They deliver a system that works technically but that fails to make a developmental contribution. To move away from the inadequacies of ICT4D1.0, then, we must have new, broader worldviews guiding ICT4D2.0 projects. These broader worldviews will likely come from two main disciplinary candidates: information systems (IS) and development studies [5]-[8]. Increasing availability and access to ICT is very important if ICT4D2.0 is to make any meaningful contribution in Nigeria. 1.1 Development of ICT in Nigeria The first Information and Communication Technology (ICT) initiative in Nigeria started in the 1950s with focus on print and electronic media. No major policy or other outcome was achieved because of strict government control. The full awareness of the importance of ICTs was absent. Only the private sector demonstrated ICT initiatives. The Federal Government of Nigeria has come to recognize the import of information technology as a major key to economic growth and sustainability. That culminated in a workshop on ICT policy in Abuja in March 2000 which brought together major ICT stakeholders such as the Nigerian Computer Society (NCS), IT Association of Nigeria (ITAN), the Computer Professionals of Nigeria (CPN) and other major stakeholders in the public and the private sector. These days, many conferences and workshops are held at different venues in Nigeria to discuss the diffusion, penetration and growth of ICT in the nation. With the collaboration of several committees, the ICT policy was produced and approved by the Federal Executive Council in March 2001 and has the National Information Technology Development Agency

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(NITDA) as its implementing body [8],[10]. According to its vision statement, the policy is aimed at making Nigeria an IT capable country in Africa and a key player in the Information society by using ICT as the engine for sustainable development and global competitiveness. The mission statement centres on using ICT for education, creation of wealth, poverty eradication, job creation, and global competitiveness. Unfortunately, there are no specifics about diffusion into the rural areas and was over-sighted by the policy formulators. 1.2 Challenges Facing ICT Diffusion and Adoption in Nigeria Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) deal with the application of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in development programs in underdeveloped countries. Although some value-added ICT4D projects have been meticulously conceived and focused on some target groups, little has been realized in terms of achievements from these projects. The major challenges facing the adoption of ICT in Nigeria include: (a) Absence of adequate communication network infrastructure (b) Relatively high cost of ICT products that is not affordable to the large low-income portion of Nigerians (c) Relatively low level of support from the rank and file of people in government (d) Problems associated with technical and management support for Internet connectivity (e) Monopolistic tendencies among service providers and operators coupled with problems of interoperability (f) Lack of quality control over importation of ICT tools and equipment into the country (g) Lack of foreign investors’ interest in doing business as a result of lack of basic infrastructure [11] (h) The challenges of sustainable wired and wireless networks (i) Cost of connectivity (j) Security issues and fraud (k) Political instability/policy inconsistencies and government bureaucracies. (l) Lack of effective coordination and other regulatory issues (m) High running and subscription costs (n) Lack of good publicity and incentives to attract potential users (o) Identification of information sources that meet the needs of users (p) Poor quality of service of the Internet and telecommunication services (q) Effective management of network traffic and infrastructure

2. Related Literature Several authors have discussed the level of Internet and ICT penetration in Nigeria as very low, resulting from high cost of bandwidth, exorbitant prices for computer acquisition, and unreliable power supply [1],[5],[10],[12]-[14]. A casual investigation of the Nigerian ICT terrain reveals that wireless network will grow faster than wired network. This fact is supported by the rapid increase in mobile telephone subscribers in recent years. Online banking and electronic commerce are also enjoying increases in embracement with the proliferation of ATM machines in notable and accessible points in different metropolis. This has however not come without the attendant problems of irregular and inconsistent services to customers, network problem and the issue of cyber crime [7],[15][17]. Firm-level variables such as financial capacity and technological absorptive capacity influenced the intensity of the adoption of ICTs thereby suggesting that globalisation of the Nigerian economy also influenced the adoption of new technologies. Closing these gaps – locally, nationally and globally - requires creative pro-people policies that focus on national priorities – on areas that will have the greatest positive impact on development. One major problems facing the development ICT for national development in Africa is the brain drain. Not finding the enabling environment has driven some of the best brains from the continent abroad in search of greener pastures. The result is a deficiency in the availability of engineers and scientists knowledgeable in r undertaking ICTrelated project. There is also the challenge of the non involvement and imbalance of gender and other target groups in policy formulation [26]. Another major obstacle is the unavailability of a sound ICT-roadmap and strategies by policy makers resulting in uncoordinated and unsustainable ICT-development activities [14],[18],[19]. 2.1 Correlating ICT with Socio-Economic Development One the benefits of the ICT revolution is the opportunity now open to Nigerian businesses to access a wider global market through e-commerce. As ecommerce opens up the Nigerian market to foreign enterprises, the relatively affluent Nigerian consumer with access to the Internet is given much greater choice with regard to desired products and services. Contrary to the situation in advanced countries where transport and communications systems for delivery of goods and services are very established, this basic infrastructure is practically non-existent in some parts of Nigeria. Where they are available, they are generally slow and expensive [25]. The communications and information delivery capability of ICT products and related services serves all sectors of society. Other sectors such as education, health, social policy, commerce, government, banks, trading,

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communications, science and technology have all benefited. Available resources relating to different aspects of usage and application are interlinked and can be accessed. In most cases, these links also direct users to other source of relevant information on the subject of choice. There is no gainsaying that there is direct correlation between ICT and economic development. ICT networks opens up opportunities that enable participation across the globe in a seamless and most versatile way. This is because, the platform provided by ICT removes some of the impediments to collaboration such as the need to travel abroad to meet with collaborators physically, the waiting period to get mails across to partners and the need to harmonize ideas from different part of the world which was greatly affected by time differences in the pre-ICT days. Nigeria’s economic growth (even down to the grassroots) is today enhanced by the availability of ICTs that make immediate interaction with contacts possible, provide smooth access to support services and make access to customers a reality. The availability of the Global System for Mobile (GSM), Asynchronous Teller machines (ATM), satellite TV networks, electronic commerce, electronic or internet banking, IPods, Iphones etc for seamless financial, commercial, trading and scientific activities is helping to also improve the effectiveness of the development of communities and enabling international agencies, and non-governmental organization to disseminate information, provide services and work with citizens of the nation with attendant economic and social benefits [29]. There is also a re-awakening among Nigerian universities to develop curricula that are ICT-driven so as to contribute directly to economic growth and development using collaborative efforts enabled by network connections and the Free Open-Source Software (FOSS) paradigm [20],[21]. Unfortunately, some target groups are still at the tail end of the benefits accruable from ICT4D– the poor and unreached in the rural areas. Although GSM systems and networks have penetrated into these spheres, they only serve the rudimentary purposes of calls and where possible, short message services (SMS). 2.2 Information Poverty and its Implications At grass root levels, information poverty remains a potent limitation to the effective exploitation of ICT4D in Nigeria. Although ICT penetration is on the increase, the spread is still very far behind the average world standard in rural Nigeria. These regions are dominated by non-mechanised farming activities, cattle rearing and other forms of peasant trading. There is lack of adequate information regarding new methods and skills applicable in the advanced countries. This lack of awareness compels them to stick to obsolete procedures thereby rendering them unproductive.

Therefore, information poverty, financial poverty, lack of understanding of new methods and techniques and misconceptions about the costs and long term benefits of network connectivity have sometimes resulted in lack of enthusiasm and outright delay or denial of investment in ICT infrastructure which is sometimes considered very expensive relative to other needs [11]. 3. Aligning ICT Development in Nigeria with ICT4D2.0 Goals During ICT4D1.0’s debut, developers rapidly recognized that plugging a peasant farmer or slumdweller into Google offered limited value. Much of the information they required would not emerge because it was not in digital format. A series of projects, such as Open Knowledge Network, sought to create relevant local data content focused on livelihood-appropriate issues such as health, education, agriculture, and rights. Once media technologies like radio and television were incorporated into ICT4D, developers recognized that its non-interactive and broad-scale nature presented a lack of specific data relevance. For these technologies, the phase change to ICT4D2.0 has been associated with community radio- a much localized broadcasting that allows community input. Community television is not yet a realistic prospect, but its equivalent, participatory video, provides for the creation of video content by the local community, presented at individual screenings for community groups [8]. Although access figures are hard to come by, about 80 percent of the population in developing countries are said to have access to a radio and about 50 percent to a television. Early in ICT4D’s history, these statistics prompted the redefinition of ICT to include radio and television, and pre-empted the importance of convergence and the roles these legacy technologies will play in ICT4D2.0. In consonance with Rohhan [27], there is a need to critically focus some attention on the technologies that already penetrate the grassroots such as mobile phones, radios and televisions. Technocrats, policy makers and developers must now seek ways to add computing and Internet functionality to these tools so as to make them relevant for ICT4D2. This must be the quest in the developing world such as Nigeria where convergence will definitely play a role in aligning with ICT4D2.0 [4],[6]. New ICT-related tools can make institutions and markets more productive, enhance skills and learning, improve governance at all levels, and make it easier for the poor to access services and make their voices heard. Beyond the Internet, which seems to have greater acceptance and penetration in big cities, Nigeria must exploit cheaper technologies already in use to deliver sufficient ICT functionality to make a difference. Instead of waiting for handset and bandwidth upgrades to allow mobile Internet access

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across the developing world, we must seek to leverage existing ICT components for development through phone calls, SMS and the use of legacy or older technologies [28]. Interface innovation that can drive access to ICT-based information, services, education, instructions and jobs for all local languages must be devised. Investors must be encouraged and motivated to tap into these opportunities that will be of mutual benefit to them and the country at large. At the rural level, techniques must be inculcated into already existing tools that can boost crop yield, advice on fertilizer application, improve well-drilling, teach mothers how to better care for infants and give health specialists current information to effectively coordinate and halt the spread of diseases, provide information on weather forecast and news of current development applicable to dairy and cattle rearing/production. Citizens can learn about how to open a company online, instead of waiting in long lines at government offices, saving time and money for everyone involved [22]. Patients can be reminded of the need to take their medications from local health centres with SMS or text message and nursing mothers can be given awareness for vaccinations through text messages. 4. Concluding Remarks The solution strategy towards bridging the digital divide demands an aggressive human capacity building in ICT through training, brainstorming among technocrats, the government, seminars and workshops in collaboration with experts from home and abroad. Convergence of already existing neo-ICT tools and medium such as radio and television in addition to penetrable modern ICT tools such as mobiles phones will also assist in realizing ICT4D2.0 goals. Borrowing from the experiences of other African countries and the advanced nations, bodies set up for the implementation of ICT4D2.0 goals in Nigeria must be strengthened and research and development must be demand-driven focusing on the provision of products to meet local needs. There is also the need to deviate from techno centricity in adult ICT literacy classes. We must begin to see ICT and computer literacy in terms of placing in the hand of learners an all-encompassing ICT tool and knowledge that will equip them with the ability not only to operate computers, but also to use any computing and allied facilities. Those who teach adults computer technology should approach it with a great deal of pedagogical responsibility. It is important that educators involved in using computers for instruction or as a subject of instruction be cognizant of the computer as more than “just a tool.” It is a cultural artefact with meaning, a meaning deeper and richer than the computer's mere physical presence [30]. To align with the ICT4D2.0 goals stakeholders must do the following:

(a) Educate the government on the need to formulate policies that will aid the use of ICT tools for enlightenment programs that among rural dwellers on issues that directly affect their welfare such as farming, health, productivity and social awareness. (b) Network operators should provide incentives for users and other agencies that enable better and more pragmatic usage of their infrastructure to aid in ICT diffusion in the rural areas. (c) User-friendly features and instruction to aid the slow learners must be inculcated into ICT imported into our nation. (d) Incentives such as reduction in calls tariff and Internet access through phones should be directed at the grassroots. (e) Teachers of technology should go beyond the usual “text” of instruction manuals and online help menus, and explore and explicate a fuller meaning and understanding of computer literacy involving practical demonstration of cutting edge ICT technology and theory applications [24]. Acknowledgement We acknowledge with appreciation the funding support of the University of Ibadan MacArthur Foundation Grant towards the success of this research. REFERENCE [1] UN-ESCWA (2005): UNITED Nation’s Partnership on Measuring ICT for development. UN-ESCWA Report on Core ICT Indicators, Beirut, 2005 [2] “University ICT4D”. UICT4D.ORG, University of Washington (2007). [3] “SPIDER” (2008): Swedish Programme for ICT in Developing Regions, KTH (2007). [4] Kentayo, M. and Bernadi, D. (2008): Information and Telecommunication technology for Development. IEEE Position paper. [5] Longe. O.B., Onifade, O.F., Chiemeke, S.C., and Longe, F.A. (2007): User Acceptance of WebMarketing in Nigeria: Significance of Factors. Proceedings of the International Conference on Applied Business & Economics. Piraeus, Greece, October, 2007. Available online at www.icabeconference.org [6] Longe, O.B., and Chiemeke, S.C. (2007): Information and Communication Technology Penetration in Nigeria – Prospects, Challenges and Metrics. Asian Journal of Information Technology Vol. 6, No. 3 pp280-287. [7] Longe, O.B., and Chiemeke, S.C. (2007): Sifting Paradigm in the Antispam Effort – SPAMAng A Domain Specific Outbound Filtering for Dealing with Nigerian Fraudulent Mails – Journal of Computer Science and Information Technology. Available online at www.ncs.org.ng [8] Heeks, R. (2008): ICT4D 2.0: The Next Phase of Applying ICT for International Development. Informatics Department at the University of Manchester, UK. [9] Ahiakwo, C.O. (2002): The Role of Internet Connectivity in Nigeria. Available online at

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[10]

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[13] [14]

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[17]

[18]

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[20]

[21]

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http://www.isocnig.org.ng/conferencpaper/paper17.ht m Ajayi, G.O. (2002): Challenges facing the Nigerian Telecoms Industry. Address delivered at Nigeria Telecoms Summit, Abuja, May 2, 2002. Datta, P. and Mbarika, V. (2006). A Comparative Global Investigation of Causal Relationships between Information Infrastructure and Service Sector Productivity. The Information Society, Vol. 22, No3, pp.149-163. Anao, A.R. (2002): Positioning Nigeria for Effective Response to the Challenges of Emerging Technologies and Globalisation Vanguard December 4th 2002 http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/econ/2002/1240i ctafrica.htm Nwankwo, J. (2006): Compulife. The Guardian, Wednesday, July 19, 2006 pp.33. Olatokun, W.M. (2007): Availability, Accessibility and Use of ICT among Nigerian Women Academics in Nigeria. Malaysian Journal of Library and Information Science Vol. 12, No. 2. http://www.ejum.org Longe, O.B., and Chiemeke, S.C. (2008): Mediated Cyber-Crime: An Investigation into the Role of Internet Access Points in the Facilitation of Cyber Crime in South Western Nigeria European Journal Of Social Sciences Volume 6, Number 3 pp. 466-472 Omolola, A. (2005): Cyber-fraud leads to Blockage of Nigeria’s Internet protocol Addresses. Lagos: The Punch Newspaper, Wednesday, January 4, 2005. Smith, R.G., Holmes, M.N., and Kaufmann, P. (1999): Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud., Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice, No. 121, Australian Institute of Criminology, Canberra (republished in The Reformer February 2000, pp. 17-19). Available online at http://www.aic.gov.au Joseph, I., Philip, F., and Shiloh, O. (2003): Use of ICT for Education, Research and Development in Ghana: Challenges, Opportunities and Potentials 2003 Round Table on Developing Countries Access to Scientific Knowledge, The Abdus Salam ICTP, Trieste, Italy Okyere, P.F.; Intsiful, J.D.K., Osae, S., Allotey, F.A., and Andam, K. (2003): “Project Proposal: Establishment of an African Institute of Science and Technology in Ghana”. ICTP, Trieste, Italy Longe, O.B., Uwadia, O., and Omoruyi, I. (2004): The Economic and Legal Implications of the Open-Source Software Alternative. Paper presented at the 19th National Conference of the Nigerian Computer Society, Abuja, Nigeria. Longe, O.B., Chiemeke, S.C., Onifade, O.F.W., Aliga, P.A., and Longe, F.A.(2008): Acceptance of the OpenSource Software Development Paradigm Among Undergraduates. – Perspectives from Nigeria. Paper presented at the Free Open Source Software IDLEO Conference. Dakar, Senegal March, 2008. McNamara, K.S. (2003). “Information and Communication Technologies, Poverty and Development: Learning from Experience”. World Bank, Washington D.C., USA. http://www.dgfoundation.org/issues/ict-fordevelopment.html, 2008 Longe, O.B., and Otti V.U. (2007): Technophobia and its Impact on Adults Learning to Use Computers in South Western Nigeria. Journal of Information

[25]

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Technology Impact, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 81-90, 2007. Available online at http://www.jiti.net Gidado, M. (1999): Internet as Instrument to Spring Nigeria Into The New MillenniumHttp://Www.Isocnig.Org.Ng/Papers.Htm Opoku, R. A. (2004): Ghana and ICT: Strides, Challenges and the way forward. http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArc hive/artikel.php?ID=54098. Feature Article of Thursday, 18 March 2004. Rohan, S. (2009): More radios than TVs and phones? http://lirneasia.net/2009/05/more-radios-than-tvs-andphones/ Babar Bhatti (2009); More Phones than Radios in Pakistan. Consumer Rights, Digital Divide, Emerging Markets Telecom, Mobile Phones, Research, Telecommunications. Published on July 6, 2009 at http://telecompk.net/2009/07/06/ George S. (2009): The Internet Society and Developing Countries. http://www.isoc.org/oti/articles/1196/sadowsky.html Dale C. and Charles D. (1993); Computer Literacy at a Distance. DEOSNEWS Vol. 3 No. 9. http://www.ed.psu.edu/acsde/deos/deosnews3_9.asp

SMSONE Community Development through Creation of Social Entrepreneurship Anuradha Parekh [email protected] [This case study was developed by the author under the guidance of Prof. Subhash Bhatnagar, as a part of work assigned to her when she was working with the Centre for E-Governance (CEG) at IIM, Ahmedabad. It has been written primarily on the basis of the author’s field visits to SMSONE’s office in Pune, India; and discussions with Ravi Ghate, the Director of SMSONE, and his team of coordinators handling operations at the state, district and taluka (sub-district) levels; and the Deputy Commissioner of Police, Pune (Crime Branch).]

Introduction Today, mobile phones reach a large portion of the Indian population, including the poor. From street hawkers to businessmen, most citizens are now connected through the mobile. A simple SMS (Short Messaging Service) facility can provide citizens with a channel to receive, share, or broadcast their views on important issues. Enabling push-down services such as sending alerts, reminders, updates, and vital information via a mobile phone can bridge the digital divide between and within rural and urban areas while serving as a useful medium of interaction between the government and public. SMSONE – ‘A Local SMS Community Newsletter’ was established in 2005 as a proprietorship firm in

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Pune, Maharashtra, by Ravi Ghate,1 a young social entrepreneur with a vision of creating self-employment opportunities for India’s unemployed or unemployable youth, and for empowering local communities with specific and localized information. Ravi Ghate designed a simple, yet unique way of reaching out to thousands of citizens using a mobile phone. As a part of its newsletter initiative, SMSONE sends free messages (SMS) on social and political issues to more than 300 communities and over 3,000,000 subscribers in Maharashtra’s 25 districts, most of which are in the state’s backward and semi-urban regions. The mobile penetration level in rural areas covered by the project is about 40%, and within that, the service covers 80-90% of the population. Through the service, bulk messages are sent within minutes to 1,000 mobile users (who may be using mobiles connections of any service provider) in a community. Field workers or community leaders are responsible for collecting information and news on local happenings in the community; these include cultural programs during festivals and public holidays, water and power shutdowns, and due dates for telephone bills and municipal taxes. In this manner, community members get access to reliable and relevant information. The project has also been successful in achieving its objective of providing a source of income to the rural youth. Its success at promoting “Self-Employment through SMS Communities” was lauded with the Manthan Award under the ‘e-Youth’ category in 2007. The project’s services have now been extended to various government/non-government organisations like the Police Department of Pune that uses the software for quick and specific intra-departmental communication; Ministry of Sports and Youth Affairs; and various schools/colleges under Pune University. Recently, SMSONE submitted a proposal to Pune’s Agricultural Department to provide agri-extensive services to farmers via the same service model. Background Realizing the importance of mobile technology in bridging the digital divide, Ravi Ghate felt the need to use it to create a location-specific medium that would open communication channels between neighborhoods in an integrated, interconnected and interactive manner. He therefore started the Local SMS Community Newsletter that offered a platform to bring 1

Ravi Ghate is the Chief Coordinator and Director of the SMSONE project and has recently been honoured with the NASSCOM Award of Social Innovation. In 2007, he received the “National Youth Award”, which is the Government of India’s highest award given to young social workers in recognition of their social contributions.

people under one umbrella, encouraged public participation, and disseminated useful and genuine information. SMSONE started with an initial investment of Rs 7,500 and was piloted in about 70 communities, each comprising a thousand members. The firm did not avail any assistance/ funding from the Government, NGO, or any charitable organisation. It follows the franchisee model, allowing every individual to work as an entrepreneur rather than a paid employee. One of the primary goals of the project is to promote social entrepreneurship amongst school-college dropouts, opportunity-less street wanderers, and financially backward youth. The project intends to connect every 1,000 mobile phone users under one local SMS community, each of which would have a community leader responsible for sending promotional or social messages to his/her community. Connectivity of all 200 million mobile users in India would therefore mean direct self-employment for 200,000 youths in India who would play the role of community leaders for their local communities of 1,000 mobile subscribers each. The software application runs on a computer with an Internet connection, and has been developed by a technical team that comprises the chief coordinator and an IT engineer. SMSs are sent via a gateway (broadcasting network) hired from a local third party. Every community is allotted a username and password to ensure security; the software also maintains an address book of the 1,000 users within each community. The application uses bulk SMS technology for one-to-many transmission of messages, and maintains a log/summary of messages sent during a period. Service Delivery Model At the time of joining SMSONE, staff members are given a two-day on-the-job training to enhance their basic computer skills. The operators are also trained on relevant procedures and on developing the right attitude to deliver quality customer service. Each project member is capable of performing all the required functions in the absence of the others. As depicted in Figure 1, the operations at SMSONE are headed by the Chief Coordinator who is responsible for the overall functioning of the state, district and Taluka (sub-district) coordinators; preparing and submitting proposals for project implementation in various government departments, influential organizations and institutes; and defining and enhancing the scope of work at various levels. The State Coordinator selects and supervises the working of District and Taluka Coordinators, each of

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whom is the agency owner of his/her respective area and the communities within it. The district coordinator helps taluka coordinators and community leaders within his/her district in building networks and collecting information from different government agencies and areas. Each taluka coordinator appoints and supervises ten to twelve community leaders, each of whom is responsible for 10-12 villages.

leaders are given a one-day training during which the procedures and the working of the organization are explained to them. §

On appointment, an amount of Rs 5,000 is taken as an investment deposit from the community leader who has the flexibility to pay back the amount in easy installments once he starts earning from the newsletter. The community leader is also asked to collect 1,000-1,500 mobile numbers from a given area – that is, one mobile phone number from each household. The leader’s first task is to conduct a primary survey of the allotted area and collect basic information from each household. During the survey, he explains the types of messages that the households could expect to receive, that the service provided to them will be free, and convinces them about the efficacy/ importance of these messages. He also ensures that the selected 1,000 members are a diverse group comprising of students, farmers, politicians, businessmen, women self-help groups, artisans and professionals.

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The community leader then gets the member’s consent for joining the community on a registration form. He prepares a manual list of all mobile numbers and submits it to the head office. The head office enters these numbers in its database and allocates a unique location specific ID for each taluka. Further, to provide targeted messaging service, categorization of customers as per their needs or community or profession is done in the database. For example, agricultural information is sent to farmers whereas education related messages or alerts on job openings are sent to student groups. This facility has been started in a few communities only.

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The community leader also acts as a reporter or journalist who collects information on various political and social events taking place within the area allotted to him, and sends the information to the respective taluka coordinator. Influential organisations, government officials and political leaders approach the community leader when they wish to send messages across to a community. A template for the same is first created at the head office and sent to the community leader via mobile, and is shown to the customer. Once approved, the message is sent to the entire community.

§

Community members receive the SMS in less than two minutes. SMS is sent in the local language (Marathi) but written in English using the Roman script. In case of delivery failure to a particular number for five consecutive instances, the community leader is asked to cross check the

Figure 1: Organization Structure at SMSONE Chief Coordinat or

State Coordinat or

Taluka Coordinat or

CL

District Coordinat or

CL CL

CL CL CL - Community Leader

The Community Leader serves as the main link to the community by linking community members to clients who wish to publish advertisements. As a field worker, he collects information on various issues affecting the community and builds his network of clients to get relevant advertisements. He is trained as a mobile journalist who can reach out to thousands of people via the SMSONE service. Based on his performance, a community leader can be promoted to taluka or district coordinator. Service Delivery Process § To start with, an advertisement is placed in the local newspapers for selection of community leaders or mobile journalists. Preference is given to those who have failed in the 10th or 12th grades or are high school/ college drop outs, opportunityless street wanderers, demoralized, and financially backward youth. §

The selected youth is then appointed as the community leader of a particular area based on his capabilities and enthusiasm for undertaking such an activity. The selected youth is presumed to understand the requirement, ethos, and social issues relevant to the community. Community

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number and replace it with a new one. Members can even opt to discontinue the service (a few such instances have been reported). Service Fee Messages that are sent are of two types: 1. Social messages include local news and alerts related to water and power shutdowns, due dates for payment of telephone bills and municipal taxes, notices on traffic congestion and road closures, important announcements from local/municipal/state/central government agencies and the local police, and related to emergency medical services. 2. Promotional messages - Alerts and updates on local happenings such as cultural programs organized during festivals or public holidays, lectures, stage shows; eye testing, health checkups and various medical camps; and birthday wishes to members. The ratio of social to promotional messages is generally 1:4 but can be changed. A maximum of five messages is sent in a month and about 60 messages annually. Family related messages are usually sent between 6 to 8 PM as this is the time when most people return from work and can share the information received through SMS with their families. As a matter of policy, one message per week, a maximum of four commercial and two or three social messages per month are sent to the members to avoid overload of information and irritation. For every social message, one rupee is charged from the customer i.e. the entity using the SMSONE facility to reach out to the community. However, the community leader has the freedom to negotiate the price for each message that he sends, and this can go up to Rs 2-3 per message. Promotional messages are charged at Rs 2-3 per message. The community leader can negotiate with competing rivals and decide to provide service to the highest bidder. The community leader can decide how many promotional messages he should send to his community against every social message. He can compensate for the lower revenue earned from social messages by sending more promotional SMS. The usage of this service is limited only by the vision of the youth who runs the project and can be as diverse as: advertisements from shopkeepers about shop openings or discount offers, credit societies and cooperative banks, hotels, and establishments, insurance agents, car or two-wheeler dealers and service centers, and real estate dealers; marriage invitations; political messages for budding local leaders; information related to panchayat, municipal, state assembly or parliamentary elections from political parties; and

information about lections of various cooperative bodies. Out of each message sent, 50 paise is passed on to the head office, irrespective of the rate charged by the community leader. The balance is retained by him and is his income, thus allowing him to earn anything between Rs 5,000-10,000 every month. Out of the 50 paise per message that goes to the head office, 40 paise goes as SMS credit charges to the gateway service provider, 3 paise each to the taluka and district coordinator, and the rest is the income of the central office (chief coordinator). Thus, the central office ends up with a meager profit margin of 4 paise per message. The total number of messages sent via the SMSONE network in 2007-2008 was approximately four million and the revenue generated was about Rs 4,000-5,000 annually. However, this has the potential to increase once the overall turnover of messages increases, enabling the project to obtain gateway services at a much cheaper rate than the current 40 paise per message. Benefits to the Community § Youth empowerment: The project provides employment to the rural youth who could otherwise be engaged in non-productive and disruptive social or political activities. The youth is not treated as an employee but as a social entrepreneur who works on behalf of and for the interest of the community. He/she has the authority to take independent decisions on the service fee charged from the client. He can earn up to Rs 6,000 per month and build his social network. He is no longer looked upon as an unwanted social element and can aspire to become a social/political leader or activist. §

Help during emergencies: This service has benefited many people who have been denied help from local authorities during emergencies such as accidents and sickness. For example, in Pune district, donations were received by a family that had a medical emergency because of the appeal made by the community leader to community members. Also, many farmers and backward communities have been made aware of important subsidies and other entitlements- vital information that is otherwise inaccessible to them.

§

Bridging the digital divide: Today, most earning members of every household have mobile phones. By communicating with the earning member of a household, one can access all members of the family. For instance, if an SMS related to a health camp is sent, the information would eventually reach members of the household or the neighbourhood. Among them, those who require medical aid and advice could then attend the health

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camp. Thus, irrespective of the fact that the elderly or children may not have direct access to technology, this audience can be reached through SMS and encouraged to participate in social activities, thereby bridging the digital divide. §

Beneficial for m-governance: By sharing information with the public through SMS, the government can help build transparency in its working and win public trust. The SMSONE services have been extended to various government and non-government agencies and departments such as the Pune city and rural police departments, Sports and Youth Services department, Pune Union of Working Journalists and various NGOs.

Current Status The project is ready for implementation in a few districts of Andhra Pradesh. Pilot projects have started in Andhra Pradesh under a joint venture with Bhumian NGO group, and in Delhi through a joint venture with Jana Chetna Manch. The SMSONE project team is also in the process of implementing the same model via a co-operative movement called COBIZ to reach out to farmers and fulfill their needs. The team intends to build a network of representatives from each village in Maharashtra and provide them with mobile phones to provide guidance and training on various agriculture-related issues. Challenges Faced by SMSONE § Limited funding: SMSONE started with an initial capital investment of Rs 7,500, which was not sufficient for covering expenses such as the cost of training mobile journalists, cost of sending messages through the service provider, and the cost of collecting localized information. §

§

Changing the mindset of the youth: Changing the perception of the youth was one of the project’s key challenges. The opportunity-less, poor individuals that the project targets are completely demoralized and presume that such activities would not accrue them any income. Moreover, the false promises of big revenues made by large, private companies, network marketing companies and data entry companies leaves the rural youth more wary. Consequently, it becomes a Herculean task to convince them to join the organization and assure them that this is not another fly-by-night network selling system. Lack of cooperation from the Government: The project team finds it extremely difficult to collect information from government departments who are yet to realize the criticality of interacting with citizens and disseminating important information to socially or economically backward classes.

Also, the idea of providing two-way interactive communication services using the SMSONE software was not well received by some government departments since they did not have a proper system or adequate manpower in place to support this initiative and were not willing to take responsibility for complaints. §

Illiteracy of target audience: Since the SMSONE services reach out mostly to the rural communities in Maharashtra, there is a negligible percentage of the population that can understand the messages sent in Roman scripts. Illiterate and textually nonliterate mobile phone users rely on a variety of cues to navigate the world of text and numbers, largely inferring meaning from shape, size, texture and scent, and require help from others to read out messages.

§

Poor mobile penetration: The reach of the newsletter is mostly in backward and semi-urban regions of Maharashtra such as Parbhani, Hingoli, Osmanabad, Latur, Gadchiroli and Chandrapur. According to the project team, the estimated mobile penetration in these areas is just 10 to 12% due to the absence of adequate telecom infrastructure. This hinders the development of such an initiative. At present, the telecom network in India connects only about 4,500 towns and cities and 65,000 villages.

§

Non-availability of low cost handsets: GSM mobile handsets that enable use of Indian scripts (with a price range of Rs 1,500 and above) are largely unaffordable for rural inhabitants, and are not easily available. Moreover, messages under this service cannot be sent to CDMA-enabled phones due to technical limitations. In CDMA mobile phones, the sender’s name is not displayed and only the telephone number is displayed; this makes it difficult for the receiver to identify the source of the message, thereby reducing the credibility of the message.

§

Message space limitation: The 160 character message size limits the amount of information that can be sent to community members. Also, the policy of maintaining the ratio of social to promotional messages at 1:4 restricts the number of social messages that can be delivered. OTHER USERS OF SMSONE

Pune City Police (Maharashtra) Pune’s Police department started using this service in December 2006. The crime branch of Pune police, responsible for prevention and detection of crimes committed in the city, implemented the software to enable quick and specific intra-departmental communication. According to Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime), Anil

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Kumbhare, “the software has benefited the police in sending confidential and non-confidential messages to selected officials at a very fast speed. The software helps in maintaining secrecy of confidential and vital information as against using wireless systems where the chances of leakages are much higher”. The messaging facility provided by the SMSONE software allows each zonal head to communicate with his subordinates in his own zone. The Commissioner has the facility to communicate with all his officers or selected group of officers, anytime and can send reminders for collection of reports from the zones. The messaging facility also helps the police in monitoring the city in case of riots, social events or natural calamities, while proving highly effective in alerting citizens against any potential threat or in controlling rumors. The police department prefers the SMSONE messaging service over services provided by private telecom players since it enables sending bulk messages within a few minutes (five to ten minutes) as against five hours taken by networks of other service providers. This is possible because SMSONE uses an independent gateway hired from a service provider. If the police department is unable to send messages during emergencies, the SMSONE team is asked to do so, on its behalf. The public receives messages in the name of Pune police with relevant help line numbers provided at the end. University of Pune (UoP) - National Service Scheme (NSS) UoP-NSS department has been using the SMSONE software service intensively since two years to send alerts and information to students, 500 program officers and 250 college principals across three districts of Maharashtra Pune, Nasik and Ahmednagar. According to Sanjay Chakane (Program Officer, NSS), the service has been a boon as it has enabled them to eliminate the cumbersome procedure of writing and sending letters to concerned offices, which cost around Rs 7 each without the surety of it reaching the right person on time. In the case of the SMSONE service, however, the program officer has to personally follow up only with those who have failed to receive the SMS. For example, during the Mumbai terrorist attack in November 2008, the general public feared moving out of their homes and collection of blood for the victims was a major concern. The UoP-NSS sent messages to all Pune city NSS program officers (POs), which was in turn conveyed to the youth who collected 510 bags of blood within three hours. Schools Pune’s Vikhe Patil Memorial School has been using this service since September 2006 to inform parents of its 1,600 students in advance about the school holidays, delay or breakdown of school buses, changes in exam schedules, or any last minute alerts/ updates. The same service is also used to connect at a personal level with students and their families by sending best wishes on birthdays, anniversaries or special occasions. The software “SMSONE–Express” is a PC-to-mobile service that can send 1,000 messages in a minute as against an ordinary mobile that can send only six messages per

minute. A staff member of the school hired for the same operates the software. SMSONE–Express is offered to schools in three ways: a) the school can volunteer to bear the minimal costs or b) the parents can pay an annual charge of Rs 30-50 or c) the school or parents can receive the service free of cost if the parents are willing to receive promotional messages sent by SMSONE to cover its cost. Thus, the initiative is a reliable, easy, and a most cost-effective way of contacting parents on a mass scale. The project has caught the attention of many other schools in the city. Pune Union of Working Journalists (PUWJ) This organization for journalists in Maharshtra has about 430 working journalists associated with it. The organization uses this service to send alerts, updates and inform its members about get-togethers and important press conferences. After using this service for the past two years, the members feel that the service has been excellent and cost-effective. Any member wanting to use the service to disseminate information on any particular event contacts the technical team of SMSONE and asks them to send the message on their behalf through the user ID created for the community. Since the software is user-friendly, members themselves can go the SMSONE website, log in, and send messages accordingly.

References § § §

§ §

§ §

‘Smart’ Messaging Service. Maharashtra Herald, December 6, 2006. Brahme, N. Two cool. Times of India, Pune Mirror, February 18, 2009. I4donline.net (2008, June 6). Building SMS network for empowering poor. Available: http://www.i4donline.net/interview/interviewdetails.asp?interviewid=444 Jagtap, U. In short, the message is social change and empowerment. Dainik Jagran, Pune Edtion, January 16, 2009. MiD DAY (2009, February 24). Social entrepreneur uses ‘mobile scribes’ to make a difference. Available: http://www.mid-day.com/news/2009/feb/240209-SMSnewsletter-Parbhani-Ravi-Ghate-Ahmed-Siddiqueurban-population-Malaysia.htm Schools to keep parents informed via SMSes. Indian Express, Pune Newsline, September 30, 2006. SMSONE (n.d.). Connecting BoP through Local SMS community newsletter. Available: http://www.pdfcoke.com/doc/8240644/Local-SMSCommunity-Newsletter

Automatic Transliteration of Indian Language Text to Braille for the Visually Challenged in India Tirthankar Dasgupta and Anupam Basu Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India [email protected] [email protected] Abstract—Braille and audio feedback based systems have vastly improved the lives of the visually impaired

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across a wide majority of the globe. However, more than 15 million visually impaired people in India and its sub-continent could not benefit much from such systems. This was primarily due to the difference in the technology required for Indian languages compared to those corresponding to other popular languages of the world. In this paper we present the Sparsha toolset, a speech-enabled bidirectional automatic Indian language text to Braille transliteration system. The system allows bridging the communication gap between a visually impaired and a sighted person. The present system can be configured to take any Indian language text document as input, and, based on some transliteration rules, can generate the corresponding Braille output. The system is augmented by an Indian language text-to-speech (TTS) system through which a user can get instantaneous audio feedback from the input text. We also present an Audio QWERTY editor which allows a visually impaired person to read and write Indian language texts through a computer. The contribution made by this research has enabled the visually impaired to read and write in Indian vernaculars with the help of a computer. INTRODUCTION The Braille encoding system is the primary means of representing textual documents in a readable format for the visually impaired [1], [2]. However, due to the scarcity of Braille printed reading materials, blind people in India face a daunting task while getting formal education and securing a respectable employment opportunity. The situation worsens due to the unavailability of low-cost technological support. The National Census of India has estimated that out of around 21.9 million disabled people in India [3], more than 15 million people in the country are blind. This is considered to be the highest among all other disabilities. Three out of every five children in the 0-9 year age group have been reported to be visually impaired in India. Due to their inability in accessing information from written text documents, the blind face significant difficulties in communicating with sighted people in public places like post offices and banks where writing is the primary mode of communication. The advent of computer systems has opened up many avenues for the visually impaired who have benefited immensely from computer-based systems like automatic text-to-Braille translation systems and audio feedback-based virtual environments. Automatic text-to-Braille translation systems are widely available for languages like English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Swedish. Similarly, audio feedbackbased interfaces like screen readers are available for English and other languages. These technologies have enabled the visually impaired to communicate effectively with sighted people and also harness the power of the Internet.

Several works have been done on building automatic, bi-directional text to Braille transliteration system and speech- enabled interfaces for the visually impaired community [4]-[8]. However, most of the systems cannot be directly used by the large visually impaired population in the Indian sub-continent [15] due to the following: § Most systems are based on foreign languages like English, French, Germany, Spanish, Portuguese, and Swedish [9]-[12]. § Indian language scripts are quite different from that of European or American languages, necessitating separate rules to transliterate Indian language texts to Braille. § Foreign systems like, Duxbury [9] and JAWS [13] are costly, given the Indian economic reality of the visually impaired population belonging to the poorer section. To overcome these challenges and limitations of the existing systems, we present the Sparsha toolset, a speech- enabled transliteration system from Indian language text to Braille. The system provides a generic framework for the transliteration of large number of popular Indian language texts to Braille. Further, the system can also be used as an Indian language document reader where a user can select a particular text document to get the corresponding speech output. This allows the present system to be used by both, a sighted as well as a blind person. We also extended our present system to provide Braille transliteration of Dzongkha texts, keeping in view Bhutan’s proximity with India. Currently, our system handles only four Indian languages: Hindi, Bengali, Assamese, and English, along with Dzongkha. However, due to the system’s unified framework, any other Indian language can be easily be added to it. INDIAN LANGUAGE BRAILLE ENCODING SYSTEM The Bharati Braille system is the standard technique of representing Indian language texts to Braille [1]. The system uses six dot cells to represent each character. The combination of these six dots can generate 63 (26-1) different Braille characters. It has been observed that for all Indian languages, the corresponding Braille code is the same. In other words, a distinct Braille cell may correspond to a different Indian language character. However, a single Indian language character may require one or more than one Braille cell for its representation. This process is illustrated in Table 1. Table 1: Braille representation of Indian language characters Braille Bengali Hindi k P . "R




Q >

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One of the most interesting phenomena found in Indian language scripts is the usage of composite or conjugate characters. Conjugates are often constructed by the sequential concatenation of two or more characters with a special character called halant. The construction of conjugate characters follows certain rules (see Table 2). Table 2 clearly illustrates that the conjugate characters, as constructed by clustering of consonants and vowels, may have an entirely different visual representation. However, the corresponding transliterated Braille is represented by a sequence of Braille cells for each of the characters.

a speech output or can transliterate the text to Braille. The details of the major components of the system are discussed in the subsequent sections. The Text-To-Speech Engine A text-to-speech (TTS) engine is at the core of the file reader architecture. It is responsible for converting strings of text to their corresponding human voice equivalent. A multilingual file reader essentially requires a text-to-speech system that can support each language that it tries to read out. This usually refers to a collection of TTS engines for different languages rather than a single TTS engine. To develop the file reader, we used a TTS engine called Shruti [7]. Currently, the Shruti TTS engine supports two Indian languages, namely, Hindi and Bengali. It uses a method of di-phone concatenation to synthesize speech in Indian languages using a unified signal dictionary. Consequently, it has a low memory requirement and can be used even on low-end PCs. The source code for the above mentioned TTS was available to the authors; hence, a number of changes were made to make it more suitable for file reading. It was found that the TTS needed to access certain data very frequently. This included the speech dictionary and other static data (E.g. exception lists required for Natural Language Processing). This data was statically bounded to the executable program such that it automatically got loaded into primary memory when the TTS started up. This eliminated the huge time overhead associated with the large number disk access that would have been incurred. Finally, a wrapper was built around the TTS engine so that it could be used by a number of applications, including our transliteration system. The wrapper also provides a number of other vital features like, conversion of text in Unicode or iTrans to ISCII (Indian Standard Code for Information Exchange), which is the native Keyboard representation format of the Hook TTS being used, and pronunciations of individual and conjugate characters.

Table 2: Conjugate construction rules with examples taken from Bengali language (C=Consonant, H=Halant, V=Vowel)

Rule Example Braille   ++ =  CHC @+K +  + +  =  @KRI CHCV @S@TR CHCHC +  + +  + =   CHCHC +  + +  + +  + = @S@TR9   

V The SPARSHA System Architecture The figure below depicts the architecture of our proposed Sparsha system and the essential components of the present system. The two major goals of the system are to provide: § Audio feedback to the Indian language text § Forward or reverse transliteration of text documents. The input to the system may be a text document written in any popular word processor, or Indian language texts entered through a keyboard. Based on the user’s requirement, the system can generate either Keyboard Input Methods

User I/P through Keyboard/Mouse

Regional Language Fonts

Font

Rendering Engine

Input Key Stroke

Operating System

Mouse Hook

Glyphs Indian Language Text Documents

Forward Transliteration Rule

Forward Transliteration

BRAILLE PRINT

Text Document Interface

SPEEC

Reverse Transliteration Rule

Reverse Transliteration

Braille Document

Embosser

TTS Engine

TTS Engine

SPEECH

Input Document Type & Keyboard Input Methods In order to create an Indian language document, a text editor is required for accepting the regional language text entered through the keyboard and perform different operations on it, like formatting, printing, and saving the text. Further, it is also desirable that the editor should support different font encodings (like, Unicode, ISCII, ASCII, and iTrans) which are popularly used to

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create Indian language text documents. There exists no such editor that can support all the above mentioned list of font encodings together. For example MS-Word 2007 supports Unicode as well as ASCII encoding; the most common editor supporting ISCII is the iLeap editor. A solution to this problem is creating a new text editor that can support all the mentioned font encodings. However, the developing a new text editor will require a substantial time and effort. Further, it expects a user to learn the new system which is very difficult for a visually impaired user. Hence, in our proposed architecture, we allow a user to create a text content in any of the commercially available regional language text editors available in India. However, in case of unavailability of such editors, our system provides a basic form of a regional language text editor that is integrated with the Sparsha system. Currently, the editor provides some basic functionality as compared to a full-fledged text editors like creating a new document, opening of documents in multiple tabs, saving documents, and searching regional language text. Indian Language Font Rendering Proper Indian language fonts and the font rendering engines are necessary for producing correct visual representation of any regional language text. Though this may not seem important for a blind user, it is essential for him/her to communicate with other sighted people. The OpenType font format provides a large number of features essential for supporting regional languages, especially complex scripts [14]. Therefore, it was found to be suitable for the mentioned purpose. In OpenType fonts, all information related to the proper rendering of the font may be included within the font file. GSUB (Glyph Substitution) and GPOS (Glyph Positioning) are two tables responsible for storing such information. These tables play a critical role in displaying regional language text as a lot of character reordering, combination of characters and glyph reshaping may be necessary. Glyph substitution is the process of replacement of one or more glyphs by a new glyph like while writing conjugates. Glyph positioning refers to process of shifting a glyph to produce the proper visual representation (E.g. while writing vowels in Indian languages called matras). However, though the visual representation of the text in the above cases changes, the changes in the original string of characters remains unchanged. Both the above mentioned tables find extensive use, especially in Indian languages. Input and Output of the System The proposed Sparsha system can accept English text in the form of plain text files and Microsoft Word documents. Apart from English, the Braille transliteration system, as described, can take Indian language text as input. The input text document of the

system can be of any type like: § Unicode text – generated by any standard editor supporting Unicode [15]. § ISCII (Indian Script Code for Information Interchange) [16] documents generated by applications like iLeap [17] The output of the Sparsha system can be of two types. A user can select a particular section of the text document to get the corresponding Indian language speech output, or a user can obtain the corresponding Braille output on a large variety of commercially available Braille embossers [18][19]. The current system has been tested on the following Braille embossers: Index Basic-S, Index Basic-D, Index 4X4 PRO, Romeo Pro 50 and Juliet Pro. Forward Transliteration The input to the transliteration unit is either an English text or an Indian language text document. The text documents are either based on Unicode, ASCII, or ISCII encodings. As discussed, different Indian language characters share the same Braille representation. In other words, mapping rules to transliterate one Indian language can be simultaneously used to transliterate any other Indian language text to Braille. Thus, in order to implement this, we build separate code tables for each of the languages and, based on the input language, the corresponding code table is used. An example of the code table structure is shown in Fig. 1. The code tables are stored in a hash table. Consequently, mapping of input text to Braille takes a constant amount of time resulting in a very first transliteration output. The said method of implementation also makes the system highly scalable and allows the inclusion of more languages in future, if required. Fig. 1: Code Table Structure of both Forward (a) and Reverse (b) Transliteration Engine 0981 0027 0045 090F 0947 0035 0982 003B 0046 0036 0000 0036 0983 002C 0047 0917 0000 0037 0985 0041 0048 0038 0000 0038 0986 003E 0049 0907 093F 0039 a b

Transliteration of English text to Braille is a relatively straight forward process, where there is a direct mapping between the English character and the Braille character. However, Indian language text to Braille transliteration is not as straight forward as English. Transliteration rule for a particular Indian language character depends upon its previous and the next character. For instance, if a character is preceded by a halant, then during transliteration, position of the character and the halant is swapped. This phenomenon can be represented by the rule: Precede(X, halant) à swap(X, halant) Another interesting feature found in Indian language Volume 19, No. 3, October 2009

text transliteration is the handling of matras. A vowel may occur either as a matra or it may appear as a distinct vowel. If the vowel occurs as a matra then a special symbol appears before the vowel. There are number of other rules necessary for the transliteration of any Indian language text to Braille. The rule files facilitate the addition of a new rule, at any point of time, without disturbing the original system. Reverse Transliteration The Indian language Braille transliteration system also allows reverse transliteration of Braille to Indian language text document. This enables a visually impaired to communicate comfortably with other sighted people. The Braille code to be transliterated may be entered into the computer using standard editors as discussed in the latter section. After translating the Braille code into text, the text may be given as an input to the text-to-speech engine, integrated within the transliteration system as discussed before, to allow audio based feedback. The process of reverse transliteration of the Braille text is similar to that of the forward transliteration. However, there are certain ambiguities that are needed to be resolved in order to get the proper rendering of Indian language texts. For example, as discussed above, vowels and matras have got the same Braille code. Hence, in order to distinguish between a vowel and matra, Braille code of the previous character is considered. An example of a rule that resolves the ambiguity between a vowel U+0990, a matra U+09C8 and an ASCII character U+002F is given below: If Prev (U+002F) is U+0041 Then Replace (U002F, U+0990) Elseif Prev (U+002F) is U+002C Then Replace (U002F,U+002F) Else Replace (U002F, U+09C8) We constructed separate rules to handle code table for each of the supported languages. Thus, our system can be easily extended to allow reverse transliteration of any other Indian language texts. WORKING OF THE SYSTEM As mentioned previously, the Sparsha system can be used either as an Indian language text reader or it can be used to transliterate Indian language text to Braille. The system can take input either from documents created using popular text editors or the system provides its own simplified Indian language text editor which can take inputs directly from the keyboard. The keyboard input methods are integrated with operating system in order to accept text in regional languages from the keyboard. Thus characters (entered through the keyboard) in regional languages are fed into our text editor. The editor analyses the keystrokes to identify the text characters and based on the users command they are immediately sent to either the TTS engine to be spoken out or to the transliteration engine

to instantaneously get the Braille output. The GUI of the system also allows a user to select a particular portion of text and get instantaneous speech or Braille output. Apart from keystroke analysis, the GUI of the editor also captures the mouse operations as performed by the user. Instead of searching for the shortcut keys from the keyboard, a user can send the same keyboard commands by performing different mouse operations. The Sparsha system generates a mouse hook process to captures different possible mouse clicks. Each mouse click operation is mapped to a certain keyboard operation. The mapping rules are customizable and based on the user’s requirements can be changed easily. Operating the system with a mouse is particularly helpful to a visually impaired person and our experiment has shown that operating the system with mouse operations is more preferred to keyboard operations for certain users. BRAILLE AUDIO QWERTY EDITOR The primary goal of the audio QWERTY editor is to allow visually challenged people to create Indian language Text/Braille documents. This requires an interface for accepting the regional language text entered through the keyboard and performing different operations on it, like formatting, printing and saving the text. The creation of a new editor interface was not warranted as it would put additional burden on the user to learn the new system. Hence, we choose to use some already existing standard editor with the required capabilities. Our investigations proved that Microsoft Word XP or its higher versions can be configured to accept text in regional languages including Indian languages. Apart from Microsoft Word, the Audio QWERTY editor plug-in can be integrated to any other Unicode enabled text editors like, Notepad, and Wordpad. However, there are several reasons for choosing Microsoft Word such as: 1. Support for Unicode – This ensures that almost all natural languages of the world can be used with the editor. It also implies that a document can contain text in more than one language. 2. Rendering of Fonts – It uses proper rendering engines for correct rendering of regional language fonts including glyph shaping and repositioning [20], [21]. 3. Well documented object model – the editor in question exposes a comprehensive set of objects for interacting with it, hence eliminating the need for the editor source code. This also simplified the task of programming as it allows the programmer to obtain various information including editor settings, text being edited, formatting information, etc. by just querying the editor. 4. Ease of Use – the existing popularity of this editor predicts a low learning curve for the proposed system as it allows the user to utilize

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FIELD TESTING AND EVALUATION A subset of the Sparsha system known as the Bharati Braille Transliteration System has been deployed by Webel Mediatronics Limited in a number of organizations for the visually impaired all over India as well as in Bhutan as a part of a project sponsored by the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Government of India. As a result of these field tests the system underwent an iterative process of refinement to reach its current form. A plethora of requests and suggestions from visually impaired users led to the development and

inclusion of a number of additional features and tools that were added to the toolset. The process of continuous feedback helped the Sparsha toolset mature over the years. It also helped in weeding out many bugs and shortcomings of the initial versions of the system. Based on the user feedback we performed a two level of evaluation for the current Indian language Braille transliteration system. This includes: 1. First level of evaluation: Transliteration Accuracy 2. Second level of evaluation: Transliteration Speed First level of evaluation: Transliteration Accuracy In the first level of evaluation our primary objective is to achieve high transliteration accuracy. The accuracy of the system has been measured manually by people working in different blind schools and organizations. We create four Braille document based on Bengali texts and three Dzongkha Braille documents. All the documents are utf-8 encoded. The specifications of the Bengali text documents are shown in Table 3. Table 3: Braille transliteration test data specification File Characters Text type Doc 1 400 Only Bengali text Doc 2 1000 Only Hindi text Doc 3 1200 Bengali and English text mixed Doc 4 1600 Hindi and English text mixed

These Braille documents are read by a blind person and the transliteration errors are marked manually by the users. Fig. 2 shows the result of the above experiment. Most of the errors occurred due to some of the special Indian language characters like U+0950, U+0960, U+095B and U+09F3 which are not present in the Text-Braille code table. Fig. 2: Errors during transliteration using the Sparsha toolset Transliteration Errors

Number of transliteration Error

past experience with this editor. Furthermore, the editor provides a large number of keyboardshortcuts for performing many common tasks which makes the system easy to use visually impaired users. It also promotes the use of mainstream applications by blind users. One of the unique features that makes the audio QWERTY editor different from other commercially available text editors is that, the editor is integrated with the Indian language Text-To-Speech system (Shruti) as a result each of the keyboard operation performed through this editor is followed by an Indian language voice feedback. This enables it to be used by any visually impaired person to read and write Braille texts. In order to write regional language or Braille documents the system provides different keyboard layouts to the user. By selecting a particular language from the operating system, a user actually enables the keyboard layout for that particular language. This allows the user to write text documents in the selected language. A keyboard layout or an IME (Input Method Editor) allows a person to type in text in a particular language using the keyboard [22]. In other words, a keyboard layout or IME can be defined as a mapping function between different key strokes and corresponding characters produced by them. It is usually in the form of a dynamic link library and binds strongly with the operating system. The Windows operating system can maintain a number of such keyboard layouts simultaneously. It also allows the user to switch dynamically between several keyboard layouts associated with different languages. Hence the user can type in text in different languages within the same document by switching keyboard layouts. In order to type in text in a regional language like Hindi or Bengali the corresponding keyboard layout is required. Microsoft Windows provides keyboard layouts for a number of regional languages. However, IMEs are not available for a large number of other regional languages. Such IMEs can be developed with the help of Windows DDK (Driver Development Kit). In our case such an IME for Indian language Braille was developed so as to enable the user to type Braille text directly into any Windows application.

7 6

6

5 4

4

3

3

2 1

1

0 400

1000

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Number of characters

Second level of evaluation: Transliteration Speed In the second level of evaluation our primary aim is to evaluate the transliteration time taken by the system. Volume 19, No. 3, October 2009

For this we have created seven Indian language text documents whose sizes ranges from 25000 characters to 75000 characters without considering the space. We apply the same evaluation technique as discussed in [2]. Each of the documents was tested in an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz CPU with 2 GB RAM and 160 GB HDD. The result is shown in Fig. 3. Fig. 3: Computation time taken during Braille translation in Sparsha Estimated Transliteration Speed (in msec.)

Fig. 5: Number of words with errors for every ten words

Time (in msec)

250 200

196

150

for using the file reader efficiently. The experimental results shown in Fig. 4 and 5 pertain to a particular visually impaired user having some experience with Jaws. The experiments were carried out by dictating a paragraph of about hundred words to the user while he typed it into the computer using the Indian language file reader. However, this is only a preliminary experiment. It was also found that both the typing speed and the error rates improved significantly with practice.

181

More than 2 Errors 20%

No Errors 10%

135 103

100

One Error 30%

50 0 25000

31000

40000

50000

Two Errors 40%

Number of Characters (in 1000)

REFERENCE From the result it can be noted that the ILBT system performs considerably better than the Sparsha toolset. The reason behind such a marginal difference may be due to the usage of separate hash table for each of the Indian languages. The usage of hash table reduces the searching time complexity to a constant time as a result the overall transliteration time reduces drastically. The file reader tool needs extensive training before a naïve user can use it efficiently. Visually impaired users who are already familiar with Jaws or other screen readers can adapt to this system very quickly. This tool was primarily tested by visually impaired users having reasonable experience with Jaws. Fig. 4: Comparison of the typing speed of a visually impaired user using Jaws and the Indian language file reader 30

Words per Minute

25 20 15 10 5 0

Jaws

File reader for Indian Languages

The Indian language file reader could not be experimented with a large number of users since a good level of expertise with screen readers is required

[1] A. Basu, S. Roy, P. Dutta and S. Banerjee. “A PC based multi-user Braille reading system for the blind libraries”, IEEE Transactions on Rehabilitation Engineering, Vol. 6, No. 1, March 1998, pp.60—68 [2] A. Lahiri, J. S. Chattopadhyay, A. Basu, “Sparsha: A comprehensive indian language toolset for the blind”. Proceedings of the 7th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility. 2005. [3] http://v1.dpi.org/lang-en/resources/details?page=246 [4] P. Blenkhorn, “A system for converting braille to print”, IEEE Transactions on Rehabilitation Engineering, Vol. 3, No. 2, June 1995, pp. 215-221 [5] HAL. Dolphin Computer Access, www.dolphinuk.co.uk/products/hal.htm [6] C.A. Pennington and K.F. McCoy, “Providing intelligent language feedback or augmentative communication users”, Springer-Verlag, 1998. [7] T.V. Raman (1996). “Emacspeak – a speech interface”. Proceedings of CHI96, April 1996 [8] http://www.braille.se/downloads/winbraille.htm [9] Duxbury Braille Translator, 2000. www.duxburysystems.com/products.asp [10] www.indexbraille.com [11] NFBTRANS. National Federation of the Blind, 2004, http://www.nfb.org/nfbtrans.htm [12] MONTY, VisuAide. http://www.visuaide.com/monty.html [13] JAWS for Window. Freedom Scientific. http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/software _jaws.asp [14] Microsoft Typography, “Specifications : overview”, www.microsoft.com/typography/SpecificationsOvervie w.mspx [15] Unicode. http://www.unicode.org [16] Technology Development for Indian Languages, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication & Information Technology,

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Government of India. Available at http://tdil.mit.gov.in/standards.htm [17] iLeap. Centre for Development of Advanced Computing. http://www.cdacindia.com/html/gist/products/ileap.asp [18] A. Taylor. “Choosing your Braille embosser”, Braille Monitor, October 200. Available at www.nfb.org/bm/bm01/bm0110/bm011007.htm [19] www.brailler.com/ [20] J. Hudson for Microsoft Typography, “Windows glyph processing : an open type primer”, November 2000, [21] http://www.microsoft.com/typography/glyph%20proces sing/intro.mspx R. Rolfe “What is an IME (Input Method Editor) and how do I use it?” http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/handson

ePanchayats ICT for Rural Local Government in India Dinoj Kumar Upadhyay Center for Science, Development and Media Studies, Noida, India [email protected] In a geographically and culturally diverse country like India, a system of accountable, efficient and transparent local government is indispensable for development and public service delivery at the grassroots level of society. Majority of the population lives in rural areas and out of the rural inhabitants around a quarter are conspicuously below the poverty line (BPL) and under extreme deprivation. Even after more than six decades of independence, many rural areas still lack basic infrastructure such as roads, water, electricity, hospitals, schools and so on. India has established one of the largest systems of local governance of the world through the 73rd Constitutional amendment in 1993. It has adopted a decentralized strategy based on the principles of subsidiarity with a more active and area-based approach to rural development. Rural local governments (henceforth referred to as Panchayats) have been given a wide range of powers and duties related to rural development, implementation of antipoverty programs, job creation, rural marketing, social and political empowerment of weaker sections of the society, and so on. Panchayats are also instrumental in mobilizing the dwellers and other agencies for designing and implementing rural development initiatives that are more adapted to local needs. Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) in rural areas signify India’s experiment with direct democracy at the grassroots level. The landmark 73rd Constitutional amendment has brought a paradigm shift in the system of local governance. PRIs have become the nodal agencies for inclusive development in rural areas. After a more than a decade and half, there is a growing

realization that the system of Panchayati Raj needs to be re-energized and strengthened to address persistent development challenges more effectively and also to be responsive to emerging problems such as climate change, water scarcity, natural disasters, etc. Globalization and the information revolution have changed the nature of local polity through increasing competition and awareness among the villagers. The technology that is most transformative in today’s society is Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Information and Communication Technology does not impact physical objects directly; instead, it moves and processes information. ICTs enable decisions to be taken, assemble data, store information, and pass messages around efficiently. Because ICT’s focus is on information, it has a different layer of significance in society. ICTs produce content or information that has meaning, or at least an interpretation, and can inform all sorts of decisions.1 Therefore, ICTs have the potential to transform the system of governance. Realizing the transformative potential of ICT, the Government of India and various state governments have initiated the process of applying ICT measures to reform rural local governance for improving the delivery of public services through greater transparency and accountability. Recently the President of India, in her address to both Houses of Parliament on 4th June 2009, mentioned the government agenda for expanding broadband coverage to connect every Panchayat to a broadband network in the next three years. She also stated that the scheme for Common Service Centers or e-kiosks under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) will be suitably repositioned to become a network of Panchayat-level Common Services Centers to citizens in rural areas.2 ePanchayats: Idea and Initiatives across the Country Technically speaking, ePanchayat system is web-based and n-tiered; and functions like an Application Service Provider enabling Panchayat level digital services for all stakeholders. The stakeholders are citizens, elected representatives, Gram Panchayat officials, the governments and the knowledge workers.3 But it should not be merely perceived as an ICT enabled system of governance that provides public services on demand. It promotes virtues of good governance and 1

Kieron O' hara and David Stevens (2006), Inequality.com: Power, Poverty and the Digital Devide, Oxford: Oneworld Publications, pp. 9-10. 2 Source: http://presidentofindia.nic.in/sp040609.html 3 C. S.R. Prabhu (2007), Cost Effective Solution for Effective e-Governance-e-Panchayat, Computer Society of India, accessed on 11th September 2009, available at http://www.iceg.net/2007/books/3/28_284_3.pdf

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deepens democratic values in society. It creates an environment in which people feel empowered, establishes a system that ensures people can easily avail their fundamental rights to information, and broadens the scope of local government.

platform for users to know whom they have to approach for the processing of their applications and resolution of grievances. These portals are generally intra-linked with other state government departments that make them more service oriented.

The process of e-governance has already been started and Government of India has decided to open one lakh common services centers across the country under NeGP in order to make all Government services accessible to the common man in his locality, and ensure efficiency, transparency and reliability of such services at affordable costs to realise the basic needs of the common man.1 Now the Government of India has initiated the process to equip all Gram Panchayats with computers, or provide access to computers with broadband connectivity. All Panchayats at all levels need to be equipped with computing hardware and connectivity over the next three years. The approach would be to first use the kiosks being set up under the NeGP’s Common Services Centres initiative. For the remaining Panchayats, it is proposed to engage independent service providers who would be selected on the basis of a bidding process. It has been also planned to equip all Panchayats with necessary software and skills to handle e-Governance for better delivery of services to citizens. The other major component of ePanchayats would be that of capacity building of functionaries of Panchayati Raj Institutions. The infrastructure that is proposed to be created through e-PRI would be utilised for training of elected representatives about their responsibilities and for giving them functional knowledge of the schemes that are implemented through the Panchayats or their statutory committees.2

The Potential Benefits Development Perspective

ePanchayats:

A

The system of ePanchayat can provide tangible benefits to people of rural India in many ways: §

Efficient Public Service Delivery: ePanchayats will be able to provide many people-centric services easily and efficiently under one roof. Birth and death registration and issue of certificates, payment of property tax, water tax and other utility services, grant of licenses, grant of building permissions, grievance handling and other services can be provided at minimal cost and with minimal delays. e-PRI will not only make the process of services delivery more efficient but also minimize malpractices and corruption.

§

Monitoring Development Programmes: Monitoring and evaluation of development programmes is another area where usage of ICT is essential. Online connectivity of each district with central ministries and departments would make transmission of data easy and most importantly, timely. It would also help to create a database of all development programmes being implemented in a particular district.

§

Financial Management: Through the 73rd amendment, the Government of India has devolved financial resources to Panchayati Raj Institutions to a considerable extent. Recent trends show that demand for more financial resources is growing. Panchayats are allowed to levy, collect and appropriate taxes, duties, tolls and fees in accordance with state laws to generate their own revenues.3 Therefore, a proper system of financial management is required at the grassroots level to ensure transparency and accountability. The Comptroller and Auditor General has prescribed simple formats for preparation of budgets and accounts by PRIs. These are proposed for adoption by PRIs. An application “PriaSoft” developed by the National Informatics Center will be deployed in e-PRIs. This would also help Panchayats in collection of revenues and enable tracking of the expenditure by funding agencies.4

Several state governments have also taken initiatives to set up the ePanchayats to facilitate the development process and provide easy access to information to citizens. States such as Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Himanchal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kearla, Karnataka, Haryana and Goa have set up Panchayat portals to provide information regarding development schemes such as National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, organizational/departmental set up, developmental policies, annual reports, notification, evaluation reports of development programmes, status of development schemes, revenues etc. The common feature of the portals is that they give information in local languages like Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada, etc. and about issues concerning the local people. These portals also act as a 1

Department of Information Technology (Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India), National e- Governance Plan (NeGP), accessed on 11th September 2009, available at http://www.mit.gov.in/default.aspx?id=837 2 D. K. Jain, “ePanchayats in India”, I4D, Vol. 7, No. 4, April 2009, pp. 6

of

3

Article 243H of the Constitution of India D.K. Jain, op cit, p.7 and Ministry of Panchayati Raj (Government of India), Memorandum for Expenditure Finance Committee for the Centrally Sponsored Scheme on E-Governance for Panchayati Raj Institutions (e-PRI), 4

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§

§

§

§

Facilitating Planning at the Grassroots level: Article 243G of the Constitution of India provides the provision for decentralized planning. Panchayats would have a major role to play in the process of planning at the grassroots level of society. To facilitate the process of planning Panchayats should be provided with relevant data. The Ministry of Panchaayti Raj has developed an application “PLANplus”, which is used in many backward regions of the country. It has also been planned to enable Panchayats with GIS tools to facilitate planning at the grassroots level. Therefore, e-PRI would certainly strengthen the process of planning at the grassroots level.1 Information Dissemination: Easy access to information about the internal functioning of Panchayats and other services would be another distinguishing feature of the e-Panchayati Raj system. Internal functioning of Panchayats such as agenda of meetings, decisions taken and voting records can be kept and made accessible to citizens. Information regarding development programmes and beneficiaries of the programmes such as the BPL, pensioners and Census data can be provided. Information dissemination would certainly bring transparency in the development process. As reported in the Indian Express, the old age pension scam which has recently surfaced in several districts of Uttar Pradesh highlights the story of empowerment of ordinary villagers through information technology.2 It will also speed up knowledge and information across all tiers of Panchayats and other governmental departments. People Participation: People participation, particularly participation of weaker sections and women in the development process is essential for equitable and inclusive development. Information dissemination and awareness generation can help to increase the interest of isolated and disadvantaged sections of society in the development process. ePanchayats make information available to all without any bureaucratic hurdle and help them become aware about services and schemes for development. This would certainly help to bring them in the mainstream of development. Addressing New Development Challenges: New emerging challenges, such as climate change, water scarcity and natural disasters are posing serious threats to humanity. Since Panchayats are

accessed 11th September 2009, available at http://panchayat.nic.in/viewPortalPageAction.do# 1 Ibid 2 Indian Express, IT on the ground: How villagers in UP blew lid off pension scam, 7th September 2009

the institutions that are closest to the people, they can easily inform people in case of emergency. Thus, they must be made capable of performing such duties. People also need to be informed about the process of adaptation, mitigation, water conservation, and so on, so they can cope with upcoming and potential threats of climate change. Problems and Prospects Establishment of the ePanchayat in every village across the country is an elaborate process. ICT intervention should not be understood in isolation. ICTs function in a socio-cultural, political, and economic milieu. Their efficacy is contingent on the various forces and realities that coalesce to shape the environment into which they are introduced. To equip every Panchayat with a computer and to provide it with Internet connectivity would not be an easy task, if we look at the current status of Internet connectivity and other prerequisites for ICT enabled system of governance in rural areas. A workable system of ePanchayats warrants financial resources, computer applications, skilled human resource and political will. The primary technological factors that can impede the reach of ePanchayats are the lack of infrastructure and trained human resources. Despite India being called the Information Technology capital of the world, its computer and Internet penetration (at 2.7 per cent and 4.9 per cent, respectively) are among the lowest in the world.3 Teledensity in rural areas is around 14 per cent.4 Slow progress in rolling out common services centers would delay process of ePanchayats. 100,000 common services center were to be opened up in rural areas by March 2009, but only 50,008 have been rolled out until now. Some states, namely Bihar, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Sikkim and Haryana have already operationalized more than 75 per cent of common services centers while others such as Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Uttarakhand lag far behind in the process.5 If we think about other prerequisites for meaningful and workable ICT intervention, the issue of electricity comes first. More than half of the rural households are still not connected with electricity. Human resource is another challenge which can be a factor not only at the 3

The Financial Express, Connectivity, Penetration keep IT away from Rural India, May 7, 2009 4 Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Economic Survey 2008-09, p. 246 5 Department of Information Technology, (Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Government of India), CSC Implementation Status Across India as on August 31, 2009, accessed on 17th September 2009, available at http://www.mit.gov.in/download/CSC310809.pdf

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implementation level but also at the user level. Most Gram (village) Panchayat representatives and villagers are not computer-literate; even a simple computer application would be difficult to handle for them. Content creation in local language is another challenge. English is still an alien language in rural areas. The local population needs information in their local language and computer applications should also be in local language and simple. To a great extent, deployment of ICT in rural areas is still a top-down and supply driven approach. Application of ICT is a political issue because it has the potential to transform the socio-political dynamics of national and local polity. Therefore, its deployment largely depends on how the political elite of the nation take it. Despite the genuine problems of infrastructure and other prerequisites for ePanchayats in rural India, prospects do not seem all that grim. Governments at both the central and state levels have the vision and strategies to bridge the digital divide and provide supporting infrastructure in rural areas to enhance the capacity of Panchayats. Under the Bharat Niram programme, the Government of India has emphasized connectivity and other basic facilities. The Ministry of Power has introduced a scheme that aims at providing electricity in all villages and habitations within four years, thereby providing access to electricity to all rural households.1 It has been also proposed to achieve a rural tele-density of 25 per cent by means of 200 million rural connections by the end of the Eleventh Five Year Plan. The Eleventh Five Year Plan has also targeted providing broadband connectivity for all secondary and higher secondary schools, all public health care centers and Gram Panchayats.2 The cost of hardware and software could be higher in the first phase of installation, but it will come down substantially once the system is deployed. To sum up, ePanchayats are the need of the hour as people in rural areas are still deprived of basic facilities for a decent life. Common wisdom says that poverty and deprivation exist not only due to lack of resources but also persist because of inefficient and malfunctioning institutions. In the emerging knowledge society and information revolution, Panchayats should not be left in isolation. They should be provided with adequate technological resources in order to be able to play a meaningful role in the course of development.

1

Ministry of Power, Government of India, Bharat NirmanElectrification, available at http://powermin.nic.in/bharatnirman/bharatnirman.asp 2 Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Economic Survey 2008-09, p.247

What are your Kids Learning whilst you’re not Looking? Terry Freedman [email protected] [Terry Freedman has worked in education for 30 years. Now an independent educational ICT consultant, Terry publishes the ICT in Education website at www.ictineducation.org, and the newsletter “Computers in Classrooms”. He is currently compiling a collection of educational projects which use Web 2.0 applications. If you would like to contribute, please see this article for details.]

Why is this question important? The days when the only time children learn is when they’re at school, are no longer with us – even assuming they were ever with us. The novelist Mark Twain famously said “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”, and Oscar Wilde asserted that nothing worth knowing can ever be taught. Obviously, each overstated his case for the sake of effect, but we can probably all recognise a grain of truth in these quotations. These days, youngsters spend a lot of time at computer screens, and seem to have a natural predilection for all things technological. So much so, in fact, that many teachers regard it as axiomatic that their charges know more about using the technology than they do. Unfortunately, however, that assumption does not always affect what is taught in the classroom. In many lessons I have observed, the teacher fails to take into account what the pupils may already know and can do. Consequently, pupils are often bored in ICT lessons. A 14 year-old girl called Edith recently put this very well at a teachers’ conference. She said that she and her peers were, in effect, being ‘under-taught’. What she meant by this was that whilst they are being taught what they already know, they are not being taught what they do not know. It is sound practice to start from what the pupils know, and build up from there – not only in ICT but in any subject. By taking into account what they already know, and what they do not know, it is possible to tweak the curriculum to better suit their needs, administer meaningful assessment, and thereby, hopefully, raise standards of achievement. So what DO they already know? This is the question that Miles Berry3 and I set out to find out. We felt it was important to try to answer this question because adults often simply assume that youngsters know a lot about technology. If that’s true, there would still be a role for teachers to play in helping them to use it wisely. On the other hand, if it is 3

Source: http://eduspaces.net/mberry/weblog/

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merely a myth, then teachers have an obligation to teach young people the technology skills they need to know in the 21st century.

young people, were the following: § Young people spend a lot of time online: it is part of their life. § They use it for socialising; with people they already know (especially girls). § They use it for homework more than recreational activities like games. § They do a lot of multitasking.

In an online survey conducted by me, I asked teachers to let their classes complete a short questionnaire designed to find out how they used the Internet. More specifically, my intention was to try to find out how they engaged with social networking. The reason that few other countries besides the UK were involved is that the survey was not openly available as such. Because I wanted to ensure, as far as possible, that the data received was genuine, I did not make the URL of the survey form known publicly. Rather, I invited subscribers to my newsletter, Computers in Classrooms, to contact me if they wished their students to take part. Although the spreadsheet in Google Docs might have been used for the survey, I decided instead to use an application which I have had installed on the ICT in Education website. The application lets you build up a survey with various types of field, and to configure an auto responder by email, and/or a redirect to a particular web page.

Turning to the survey devised by Miles Berry (my role being to comment on the questions proposed), our intention was to find out in more general terms how young people use the technology when they are not in school. For this survey, we received over 1,000 responses in the space of a month or so towards the end of 2008. This is what we discovered:

This is a summary of what I discovered:

§

On average, the pupils whose average age was 15, belonged to three general social networks and two specific networks, i.e. a social network with a particular focus, such as Flickr or YouTube. I should point out here that I took a very pragmatic view of what a social network actually is. I decided that if a website enabled people to connect with each other in the way that a social networking site such as Facebook did, then it was, in effect, a social network. I have a good precedent for this approach: economists, faced with trying to define what money is, decided in the end to say that ‘money is what money does’. In other words, if something is used as money then it is, to all intents and purposes, money. The most popular general social network they belonged to was MSN, with Bebo coming a close second. In 3rd and 4th places were My Space and Facebook respectively. As far as specific social networks are concerned, the single most popular one identified by the youngsters was YouTube, followed by Flickr, followed by music-sharing sites such as iLike. In fourth place came book-sharing networks such as Shelfari. The reasons given for joining a social network were even more interesting. In prime position was the desire to learn new things, followed by wanting to collaborate with friends in respect of homework. Only in third place, with relatively few numbers, was the wish to play games. What emerged from the survey, which involved 766

Clearly, youngsters feel very at home with this technology. They also had definite views on how it should be treated in schools. Many of them thought that social networking should be allowed in schools, but under supervision. Many also believed that lessons in staying safe online should be given.

§

§ §

The majority have access to a wide range of technology, including broadband and games consoles. There are gender differences in the choice of technology, as you might expect. For instance, more girls than boys had a mobile phone, whilst more boys than girls had a games console. The top three activities on the Internet were playing games, email, and watching videos, in that order. The top three activities on a computer were playing games, playing music and writing things (stories, diaries, letters, projects and essays). Gender differences again show a similar pattern with games, video editing and programming more popular with boys, writing things, making pictures, presentations and photographs with the girls.

The differences between these results and the first ones cited may be explained by the fact that the average age of the pupils in the second survey was 12, as opposed to 15 in the first one. Interestingly, one of the questions asked was “How much do you think your teachers know about your use of technology at home?” There was a perception that their teachers really knew very little about how they were using technology out of school – with over a third claiming their teachers knew nothing about this. So what? What can we glean from these surveys? You may argue that the results are not valid, because we did not put all the controls in place that an academic research project would have required. Also, the samples may

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have had built-in biases –for example, the majority of the responses came from pupils in the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, we regard the results as both interesting in themselves, and as indicative of the benefits to a classroom teacher of carrying out such research on his or her own pupils. Ask yourself: how much do you really know about how your pupils are using technology when you cannot see them? Do you have a budding website designer in your class? Do you, moving away from the technology itself, have someone in your class who does lots of reading and writing on a computer, completely unrelated to school work? The only way to find out the answers to such questions is to ask. You could use the questions we asked as a starting point, and once you have carried out your research, the results should enable you to fine-tune your teaching to more closely match what your pupils already know, understand and can do.

Integrating HIV Information with Health and Welfare Issues Experiences of Implementing a Toll Free Helpline for Uniformed Personnel Sarita Jadav UNAIDS, India [email protected] Currently, the number of people living with HIV in India is 2.47 million, equivalent to approximately 0.36% of the adult population.1 The transmission route is still predominantly sexual (87.4%); other routes of transmission by order of proportion include mother-tochild (4.7%), unsafe blood and blood products (1.7%), infected needles and syringes (1.8%) and other unspecified routes of transmission (4.1%).2 India’s epidemic is highly varied across states and regions, and diverse trends are evident in different parts of this huge country. Even in the four southern states (Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu) where the large majority of people living with HIV in India are believed to reside, HIV prevalence varies, and the epidemic tends to be concentrated in certain districts. Reported adult HIV prevalence in six states included in the recent national population- based survey (NFHS-3, 2007) varied from 0.07% in Uttar Pradesh, 0.34% in Tamil Nadu, 0.62% in Maharashtra, 0.69% in Karnataka, 0.97% in Andhra

Pradesh, to 1.13% in Manipur.3 Though HIV is transmitted sexually in the majority of cases, injecting drug use is also emerging as an important mode of transmission in some parts of the country. HIV prevalence among populations at higher risk continues to be high (six to eight times that of the general population). Higher HIV prevalence among injecting drug users (IDU) is an important feature in the north-eastern states. Considering that more than 99% of the population does not have HIV, the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) places the highest priority on preventive efforts while seeking to integrate prevention with care, support and treatment. Central Police Organizations such as Border Security Force (BSF), Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), SSB, National Security Guard (NSG), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and Assam Rifles are deployed across the country to perform security related duties such as guarding borders, maintaining law and order, handling counter insurgencies and terrorism, protection of vital installations, providing support during natural or unnatural calamities etc. For performing such duties mobility, good health and hygiene, an alert mind, a stress free environment, timely grievance redressal, etc. are highly important. Police personnel particularly young men and women are considered more vulnerable to the risk of infection to HIV than their civilian counterparts for several reasons. They have a higher probability of blood contact being more prone to accidents, injuries and need for blood transfusion. In their course of their work, they constantly interact with key populations driving the HIV epidemic viz. sex workers, injecting drug users (IDU) and men having sex with men (MSM). Moreover they have a high risk taking ability and have long periods of deployment away from home in a sexually active age. Effective interventions are therefore required to reduce the vulnerability of the force to HIV infection. Accurate information made available at the right time and place is very effective in empowering people to make the right decisions. As part of the strategy for universal access to prevention information for all uniformed services personnel, UNAIDS supported the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) the largest paramilitary organization in India in setting up a toll free helpline (1800 -11-2111) to address health and welfare issues holistically. The toll free helpline functions as a critical tool for generating awareness on HIV/AIDS and 3

1 2

Technical Report on HIV estimation, NACO 2006. AIDS Case Reporting, NACO Jan-Dec 2007

ASIA: AIDS Epidemic update -Regional Summary. Available: http://data.unaids.org/pub/Report/2008/jc1527_epibriefs_asi a_en.pdf

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inexpensive grievance redressal by addressing health and welfare issues which otherwise would take a long time. Telecommunications Overview As of end-January 2009, the total number of telephone connections in India reached 400.05 million pushing the overall tele density up to 34.5%.1 A press release by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) announcing these figures said the growth had come mainly from the wireless segment, which added 15.41 million subscribers in January 2009. Of India’s 594 thousand villages, 550 thousand now have telephone connections whether through satellite technology or conventional lines. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has started work on the second phase of the village public telephone scheme, under which every village will have public telephone service by the end of 2009. A Brief Background of the CRPF – UNAIDS Toll Free Helpline A Toll Free Helpline in the context of HIV is vital. The confidentiality it offers, the round-the-clock facility and the no-cost accessibility make it exceptionally appealing. The veil of anonymity that a helpline provides makes users comfortable enough to listen and discuss sensitive issues, with which HIV is replete. Finally, the fact that users are able to decide when they want to use the service and to what extent, makes it client-convenient and user-friendly. The Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, jointly with UNAIDS, is working on a comprehensive strategy for HIV programming with the central and state police forces across the country. Besides addressing vulnerability reduction of personnel, the strategy emphasizes proactive support by police to Government and NGO initiatives on HIV prevention, especially with the most-at-risk populations. In an effort to ensure that 100 percent of the personnel have access to prevention information on HIV, UNAIDS in partnership with Central Reserve Police Force launched this model toll free helpline in August 2007 to cater to the information needs of over 700 thousand paramilitary combatants belonging to the Central Reserve Police Force and other central police forces deployed in remote areas across the country. The helpline is managed by the CRPF Wives Welfare Association (CWWA) and is located at the Directorate General of CRPF in New Delhi. The helpline aims at 1

Source: http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/trai/upload/PressRele ases/649/pr20feb09no16.pdf

raising the awareness level of the large number of CRPF personnel and addresses a wide range of information - from HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections (STI) and substance abuse to scholarship and medical welfare schemes for central police personnel and their families. Before the installation of this Toll Free Helpline force personnel were not in a position to acquire information from any source as they are not permitted to leave the camp and facilities around them are also very minimal. Hence their knowledge on health issues, particularly HIV and STIs, was limited and this increased their vulnerability. Major Elements of the Project The Central Reserve Police Force operates this 24 hour toll free helpline service all seven days, and provides information and personalized counseling and referral services. At any given time, thirty personnel can call and access information from the helpline. Confidentiality of the clients seeking information is maintained. No name or address is taken from the caller. No personal identifying information is requested and care is taken to avoid asking questions that might seem intrusive. The automated Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) is capable of handling multilingual data and user menus. Currently, the information is available in both English and Hindi, and the software provides easy switching over options – according to the client’s need. Majority of the callers (90%) opt for information in Hindi while the remaining opt for English. At times, Marathi and Bengali callers also receive services through counselors in their regional languages. The helpline serves as a vital channel in generating awareness, removing stigma and clarifying myths and misconceptions related to HIV/AIDS and refers personnel to appropriate services. The referral network includes government hospitals, private practitioners, lawyers, as well as HIV counselling centers, testing, care and support services, etc. In addition to the IVRS, trained counselors provide personalized counseling and referral services. In case there are specific queries on medical problems which the counselor does not have the answers to, a number is allotted to the caller and s/he is be requested to call at a stipulated time the next day. The query is noted down and information is collated from expert doctors and passed on to the clients. The caller has to mention the query number in order to access the information s/he had requested for the previous day. This can also be done through the IVRS. The counselors are supported by a user-friendly

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computerized knowledge base to assist in providing standard quality responses, and also in monitoring quality. The screen displays a comprehensive list of questions clients could ask along with appropriate responses. The counselors can also search for answers based on broad or sub topic categories as well as by keywords. All the information provided is authenticated and approved before uploading on the computer. The application software includes a content management system to update information, including that stored in IVRS. In addition, it has the contact details of health and social services to refer c lients to for further support and medical attention. c

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The helpline is also used to conduct e-Sammelans (open house sessions) for direct grievance redressal. Conducting such sessions is otherwise increasingly becoming difficult on account of non availability of personnel to preside over them. Current Status of the Helpline On an average, about 250 calls are made to the helpline every day (70 percent for HIV and STIs, 10 percent for addresses of counseling and testing centers, 10 percent for substance abuse and 10 percent for welfare schemes) and there has been a steady increase in the number of calls every month. Although the helpline has been publicized only among the force personnel, approximately 20 percent of the callers are women. Users view the helpline as an extremely useful tool for accessing information. As the helpline also offers information on welfare issues, there is no stigma attached to using it.

Alternative Payment Mechanisms Aparna Subramani (IAS), Burhan Bhindarwala and Devang D. Patel Surat Municipal Corporation, Surat, India [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Abstract–Monetary transaction processing is an essential part of e-governance and provides an opportunity to deliver quality service to stakeholders. Numerous payers face the constraints of time and distance in visiting an organization’s offices for paying their dues on time. This paper provides an introduction to the alternative mechanisms of collecting payments that would have faster realization cycles, and reduce the cost of payment and collection. It is an attempt to recommend an actionable strategy for payment collection which would be smoother and more costeffective for both the payer and payee. INTRODUCTION Many government units have started citizen facilitation centres which offer various services including the receivables collection service. But it has been observed that even these centres are unable to meet the rush of the peak period. The peak period depends on the type of collection, but in all types of collection, the last few days could be described as the peak days. Due to the typical human tendency to keep things pending till the last moment, there will always remains a great rush during last few days.

Although no personal identification information is gathered, the helpline documents each call and tracks callers using area code numbers. The information gathered is used for a variety of purposes. The helpline records and transcribes the queries, but these queries are kept confidential and in a safe place.

But the reverse is also true i.e. during the off-peak period the manpower deployed at these facilitation centres is not fully utilised. The few transactions taking place during this period does not justify the manpower deployed as well as the expenditure made on infrastructure operating expenditure. Due to this unpredictability the efficiency and effectiveness of government offices are difficult to justify.

The helpline is a part of a larger plan- the concept is being expanded to e-Sammelans that would work as a single point welfare and grievance redressal system for personnel in remote locations. At designated time slots, officers at the Central Police Force headquarters would be available to answer queries in real time.

With the growth in population and the economy, the volume of transactions handled for tax and fees collection is seeing phenomenal growth. Traditional modes of cash and cheque served well for decades together. But with the escalation in volumes, there is a clear need for alternative modes.

The Ministry of Home Affairs provides budgetary support for the toll free helpline. At a later stage, this initiative will be expanded to video conferencing facility and provide a new dimension to leadership and boosting the morale of the force, besides bringing focus on wellness promotion and decreasing vulnerability to HIV infection.

The goal of any receivables collection mechanism is to receive money § As soon as possible after service is delivered or the amount becomes due. § With minimal cost of collection. Efforts could be to minimise expenditure on front desk personnel waiting for the entire day for payers to appear. § Ideally automatically, without bothering the payer.

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The payer would be: § Happier if payment is as effortless as possible § Comfortable getting auto-debited, if the biller is trustworthy. § More comfortable paying smaller installments rather than a large amount of money once a year. § Happier not having to preserve and reproduce the paper receipt of the transaction. Citizens in general are willing to remain regular on tax payments. It is not the amount, it is the effort put into actually paying it that burdens them. In the cash acceptance mechanism, the payer generally has to withdraw money from his/her bank account, bring it physically to the tax window and pay. Organizations accumulate it till end of the day and deposit it in the corporate account the next day. It is not immediately usable. One or two days of financial interest loss to the organization could result. Acceptance by cheque can further delay the realization of the amount. It also carries the risk of getting dishonoured due to insufficient funds. Basically, payment by cheque involves information from payer’s bank to be transmitted to the biller’s bank. Essential information is the payer ID as known to the biller and the amount of bill. An improvisation could be an arrangement with the biller’s bank to accept the cheques from the payers directly at the bank branches which could shorten the realization period by a day. ALTERNATIVE MODES OF COLLECTION 1. Bank website bill pay feature 2. ECS debiting 3. Card provider site: visabillpay 4. Mobile phone based payment (GPRS/SMS) 5. Telephone IVRS 6. Kiosk accepting payment § Bank website bill pay. A good many public sector banks and private banks provide Internet banking for their account holders. After logging in, citizens can pay their bill for any of the billers listed on the site. An organization can enrol as one of the following three types of billers: a. View and Pay bill: This involves displaying the bill details and accepting payment. b. Pay bill: Printed bills can be delivered as usual to the consumer; and the amount displayed on the printed bill can be paid on the bank’s site. An organization need not show the bill details online in this option c. Payment only: It is a discretionary payment from the citizen. It could be a contribution towards a cause or it could be a request for subscription for a paid newsletter or periodical published by the organization.

Pay bill option can be used by organizations which generate time-based bills and the billing amount does not vary on consumption. Municipal property tax collection for a property can consider this option. Target Audience group: Any person with an Internet banking account can opt for this. Costs to users: Some banks provide it free to users; others may charge a small fee. Costs to organization: One time setup fee and nominal maintenance fee depending on the float with the bank. Setup: Adding an organization as a biller organization on the bank’s site and setting up a collection account. A variation to bank bill pay is the direct third party transfer from one to another account of the same bank or other bank. Net banking sites of some banks allow a comment field while making third party transfer. Unique consumer ID can be fed by the consumer while making the transfer. This comment field is also visible in the transaction details of the recipient organization. Based on this deposit transaction, the payment can be acknowledged and a digital or printed receipt can be generated and delivered to the user. This mode can be used with employee-consumers and other known stakeholders to begin with. Payers can also schedule future money transfer to avail of any early bird rebate or freedom from remembering to pay at a particular due date. At the consumer end, this could help them plan these payments in their household annual budget or their business budget; which may also need to be shown in their own income tax returns. § ECS debiting The uncertainty in incoming fund flow makes finance planning more difficult. In such case, if services like ECS are put in place and if sufficient numbers of citizens opt for such services, the fund flow can be made more predictable. Moreover, the manpower engaged in the front end collection activities can be utilised elsewhere. At times, the tax recovery rules permit collection of taxes at interim periods during the year. As per financial circumstances of the payer and the volume of dues, the number of instalments can be arranged for auto debiting similar to repaying for leased asset procurement. Since there is no user-driven action for each instalment, increase in the frequency of transactions does not require visits. Many organizations are already conversant with paying employee salaries by ECS crediting. This works by debiting a single account and crediting multiple accounts. Adoption of ECS debiting for receiving payments would be a natural incremental

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learning for organizations. This involves debiting multiple accounts of payers and crediting the organization's account. Chances of failed transactions are likely to happen due to the possibility of insufficient funds in the payer’s account. However, alerting the citizen by SMS beforehand can mitigate such cases. Target Audience group: Any person with a bank account can opt for this. Costs to users: No recurring cost to be borne by the user. Costs to organization: Reduction in costs compared to manned civic center counter. Intermediary organizations offer routine processing services for this mode at nominal extra amount. Setup: Preparation requires getting an ECS mandate form signed by the tax payers once and getting them verified by their banks and sending them to a sponsor bank, which needs to be appointed. ECS debiting is similar to taking signed post dated cheques from citizens and debiting their accounts as and when an organization raises a bill/demand without citizen’s intervention each time. Receipts would need to be printed for successful ECS debiting and delivered to the citizens. Digitally signed pdf-type receipts can be emailed as alternate means. This can be done as a pilot for a suitable subset of people for observing the operational streamlining. § Card provider site Credit/debit card providers like Visa provide bill payment facility for their card holders. Once the user receives the bill, one can visit the payment website (E.g. http://www.visabillpay.in), provide the consumer account number of the biller organization, enter the bill amount, and provide the credit/debit card details. Details are then confirmed and the transaction is completed. The entire transaction completes in seven steps. A user can optionally register with the site, enlist the billing organizations, get email alerts on new bills and keep a log of bills paid through the site. § Mobile phone based payments Banks have integrated mobile phone based payments. Mobile phones have unsurpassed ubiquity. mChek,1 Atom technologies and other such organizations provide payment facility through GPRS or SMS from a mobile phone. Setup involves enabling the payment gateway service. To the citizen, it gives the possibility of anytime anywhere payment and overcomes the barriers of time 1

mChek.com

and space. § Phone IVRS based payment Service providers are available who effect payment transaction entirely by Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS). Confirmation of transaction appears on the credit card bill or bank statement. This mode can be useful even for local language speakers. § Kiosk accepting payment Self-help kiosks are now becoming popular. In addition to their use in querying and information access, they can be used for effecting payment transactions. For this, the kiosk can be equipped with a Magnetic Stripe Reader (MSR) for swiping credit/debit cards and/or Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) for reading cheque information. A thermal or mini printer can print out the transaction receipt. This can make the physical visit to the kiosk more productive. CONCLUSION It is not too difficult to start alternate payment channels. Ample options are available to suit specific needs of the organization and target customer groups. New and young finance companies like mutual fund companies make almost all collection channels available for the customers to invest. Government organizations can build upon their decades of experience by adopting these modes. To cite a routine example, a typical household buys about Rs 25 of milk everyday, totalling to Rs 750 a month and Rs 9,000 per year. This is hardly noticed as a significant expenditure, whereas a property tax of Rs 2,000 is considered as a payment exercise by the citizen. The difference is the ease in transaction and the door-step delivery and collection. Adoption of the mechanisms discussed would also encourage payment from known sources of income. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS § Citizens of Surat and Surat Municipal Corporation officials for providing an opportunity to deliberate on their convenience. § Public and private bank officials and payment systems service providers for helping in understanding facets of collection systems.

Conference Announcements International Conference on eGovernment and eGovernance (ICEGEG 2010) Antalya, Turkey, March 11-12, 2010 The second International Conference on eGovernment and eGovernance (ICEGEG) of TURKSAT (Turksat Satellite Communication Cable TV and Operation Inc.), organized by SoSReS (Social Sciences Research Volume 19, No. 3, October 2009

Society), aims to provide a platform to leaders, bureaucrats, technocrats, researchers, practitioners and academics across the globe to present and discuss on their research findings, experiences, strategies, policies, technologies, case studies and best practices in the field of e-Government and e-Governance. The conference provides an opportunity for all stakeholders to come together to gain an understanding of realworld e-Government and e-Governance issues and to discuss ways to put research into practice. For further information on the conference and submission of papers, please visit the conference web site at: http://www.icegeg.info/

International Conference on ICT for Africa 2010 Yaounde, Cameroon, March 25-28, 2010 The International Conference on ICT for Africa 2010 will be hosted in Yaounde, Cameroon in March 2010 by the International Centre for Information Technology and Development (ICITD), College of Business, Southern University, Baton Rouge, Lousiana, USA. The overarching goal of ICITD is to conduct highly empirical and hypotheses-driven research in IT Transfer to Developing Nations and to translate such research into practical applications for managers and policy makers to make well informed decisions in the context of their respective countries. To this end, the centre will be hosting this conference, which promises to be rich, exciting and educative. It will also provide participants an opportunity to partner with ICITD in the various grant-enabled projects being undertaken at the centre. This conference will bring together a fine mix of practitioners and academicians in the area of ICTs for sustainable development. The conference will explore the contributions of Africa to the global ICT for development discourse and efforts. The objective is to highlight the synergy of collaboration between African countries and other developing countries, and between African countries and the developed countries towards development solutions. Discussions and panel debates will therefore question how ICTs become the process for South-to-South knowledge transfer and South-toNorth knowledge transfer in both research and practice. Workshops will explore international grantseeking opportunities for ICT research and projects, elearning for African universities and new frontiers in telemedicine and tele-neonatology research and practice in Africa. Further information about the conference can be obtained from http://www.ictforafrica.org and

http://www.icitd.org, or by writing to [email protected] or [email protected].

11th International Digital Government Research Conference (dg.o 2010) Puebla, Mexico, May 17-20, 2010 The Digital Government Society of North America (DGSNA), with major support from the US National Science Foundation, presents the 11th International Digital Government Research Conference (dg.o 2010). The dg.o meetings are an established forum for the presentation, discussion and demonstration of interdisciplinary digital government research, technology innovation, and applications. The dg.o 2010 conference theme “Public Administration Online: Opportunities and Challenges” focuses on open government, information sharing, interoperability, distributed collaboration, and massive intelligence in government areas, as well as Web 2.0, and cloud computing. An additional important focus area of the conference is on policy issues related to these topics. The goal of this year’s conference program is to encourage active discussions between practitioners and academics in order to provide insights into Digital Government issues leading to future innovations. In addition, submissions from the broader domain of digital government research are also welcome. These could include research papers, management, policy and case study papers, student research papers, ongoing research posters, and live demonstrations that address the impact of public administration online, use of cloud computing, and effectiveness of social networks as transformative technologies for G2G, G2C, C2C, and G2B interactions. Submissions on interdisciplinary and crosscutting topics addressing social computing in the context of broad government challenges are particularly encouraged. The conference also invites submission of panels, ‘birds-of-a-feather’ discussions, and pre-conference tutorials and workshops. For further details on the conference, please visit: http://www.dgo2010.org/.

Editorial (continued from page 1) I therefore wonder why India has not made faster progress. Perhaps the problems of development are complex with a myriad of last mile constraints and therefore an expectation of fast progress is unreasonable. The capacity to conceptualize and design ICT projects/ programs is weak both within the Volume 19, No. 3, October 2009

government and in the private sector. Many projects are not being designed in consultation with all the stake holders. The bureaucracy has failed to capitalize on the reasonable political support that exists to reform processes and implement projects with vigor. Even though Public Private Partnership is the plank on which the NeGP is being rolled out, a climate of mutual trust between the partners does not exist. Some part of the private sector is in the game to make a quick buck and some parts of the Government continue to treat profit as a dirty word and deny legitimate surpluses to the private partners. How is the political climate for ICT use for development in other countries? Please continue to send to us articles covering the various perspectives of ICT for development. The IFIP WG 9.4 Newsletter Website The Information Technology in Developing Countries Newsletter has been published by Prof. Subhash Bhatnagar (Founding Chairman of IFIP WG 9.4) through support of various agencies such as IDRC and COMNET-IT in the past. In recent years, the Newsletter has been published as a joint publication of IFIP WG 9.4 and the Centre for EGovernance (CEG), Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA). A legacy of 10 years of print circulation to its credit, this newsletter is now published on the web. The next issue of the newsletter will be published in February 2010. 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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