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IT Implementation : Trends 2009
Continued from page: 1
Monday, June 01, 2009
What's the Govt. deploying?---Benefits to the masses
The Indian govt. continues to remain a heavy spender on IT. This time, we
saw more than 10 different types of projects deployed by various govt.
departments. Like last year, this year as well, the stress was mostly on
business process management and automation type of projects. 30% of the projects
were of this type.
There is always a 'wow' factor in govt. projects, largely because of their
scale. Considering that India has a large population, any project that's
deployed for Indian citizens has to be grand. That's why, most of these projects
have a huge social impact. For instance, one project that collects bills online
managed to do 97,728 transactions in March 09 alone, the total value of which
was Rs. 34,506,609. Likewise, there was a system for automatically allotting
seats in engineering colleges for 45,000 students per year.
The interesting thing we observed this time was that many state governments
are using IT to help citizens living below the poverty line, as well as
handicapped people, old aged people, or even widows. The objective of these
projects is to bring transparency into the system, so that the benefits of
various govt. schemes reach the intended recipients, and don't land up into the
pockets of intermediaries. Several techniques are being employed for the job,
including the use of smart cards. Several state govts have started these
initiatives, and we sure hope that others would also follow suit.
While we're seeing a lot of computerization and usage of IT in the Indian
govt, a lot more still remains to be done. Most projects are still meant to
automate processes, upgrade the IT infrastructure, or provide information. We
would love to see govt. projects that are much more complex and innovative like
in the other industry segments.
Projects in education
IT usage in the education sector is picking up. This time, we received 15
projects from the education sector. In this segment, there are either the
private institutes that are surging ahead with the use of technology. Or, there
are the govt. owned ones that are still grappling with the basics--such as
putting up Internet access, Wi-Fi enabling the campus, setting up security,
automating administrative procedures, etc.
There is of course tremendous scope for IT in the education sector, and we
should see a lot more action in this space moving ahead.
Projects in other industries
As we mentioned earlier, we received project nominations from 28 different
types of organizations. In the other industries also, business process
management and automation continued to remain the focus last year, followed by
ERP deployments and IT infrastructure projects. This doesn't of course mean that
there's no innovations happening in the other industries. There are lots of
interesting things happening outside the five industries we just covered.
For instance, there are projects that allow recruiters to screen candidates
by giving them globally standardized exams based on the role they applied for.
This way, they can quickly screen the candidates and move the best ones forward
for further screening. There are projects that allow you to control appliances
with a Bluetooth enabled phone. While the project is currently meant for homes,
it could very well be deployed by offices as well. There are also some new
sectors coming up in India, such as the power sector. So there is a power
exchange that's been setup, similar to a stock or commodity exchange, and allows
buyers/sellers of power to do trading. This would obviously have tremendous
impact on the masses who are suffering from frequent power cuts. Page(s) 1 2
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