But this study is sure to create an impact in the minds of more and more people, and ultimately drive Microsoft to their worst nightmare of Open Source taking over the corporate word (at least). But let’s talk about Government Initiative in the Open Source… Now there’s a catch!

WARNING: In the following section, I might sound Frankenstein running after NIC’s to rip it’s neck of it’s body.

IBPS Site may damage your PC

Does government actually support FOSS Initiatives ? I don’t know if you are looking at th small line at the bottom of most of the Government websites, where it says – “Please use Internet Explorer 5.5 or above” or “Best viewed on Internet Explorer 5.5 or above” or something analogous. Does it

SBI site is on ASP (Microsoft Active Server Pages) meaning NOT FOSS, they are using Microsoft Technologies and are actually not leveraging the benefits of FOSS where they can be best achieved – WEB and SERVER Technologies. If you anytime in your life have applied for any of the Country’s bank exams be it PO, Managerial or Clerk, you have to visit the site of Institute of Banking Peronnel Selection (IBPS). You would notice that it won’t open on Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari or Google Chrome – it’s is simply loyal to Microsoft Technology – Internet Explorer.

Let’s visualize a simple example, where a person who loves linux or cannot afford Microsoft Window Operating System and want’s to make every move chaste, without the pains of proprietary software involved – Is demoralize, demotivated, his faith shattered to dust with a website popping up saying I need INTERNET EXPLORER! That wasn’t the idea of Tim Berner’s lee when he proposed Internet.

Does Government really support FOSS?

If the government really want’s to take initiatives, it should have made all the websites on NON-Microsoft Technologies, it would have saved them Millions actually Billions. Today NIC has 90% of their websites being maintained on proprietary – age old technologies, that are in no way match for today’s glossy looking, superbly interactive, and Intelligent websites. Are they ? They don’t even look like Corporate/Identity websites for Company information. Even if NOW!, after going through the Prof. Rahul De reports they think of moving from proprietary to FOSS Tech’s – who the hell be accountable for the earlier un-informed baseless decisions ?

The only one of the few website I’ve seen is the NIC’s Indigov. Its’ one of the best website, and based around php. Now what new I see is a Quality certificate being attached to the website by SQTC. Does that make a difference? What is then W3C for? CDAC, NOIDA has been one of the biggest contributor and promoter of W3C in Indian Government sector. However, now NIC & SQTC comes out with their Certificate attached to the website, ignoring all the work done so far in the field by W3C and unnecessarily putting  their precious efforts into standards that have been pre-established. No doubt the website is accessible, but that accounts to just 0.1% of the websites NIC is hosting/developing/maintaining (I would rather say lingering on with). Most of the disabled people are ignored in the country (I know low floor buses just landed in Delhi, but that’s just Delhi -not India right!) and Information Technology is the last seen area where you could consider disabled people to be preferred – in INDIA.

The author is not Anti-Microsoft, he just want the web to be independent, free from the boundaries just like a free bird.  As Internet / Web was essentially created to be platform-independent so that we could; and today as we are able to browse websites over Mobile Phone, Browser’s across operating systems like – Windows, Mac and Linux. And they look same everywhere.

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17th Sept, 2009 – HCL Technologies Ltd. (HCL), a leading global IT services provider, entered into a five year Transformational IT Infrastructure Management engagement with Oncor to seamlessly connect and support Oncor corporate functions, grid management operations and numerous community- based field service centers located throughout Oncor’s service area.

Oncor operates the largest electric distribution and transmission system in Texas, delivering power to more than 3 million homes and businesses through approximately 117,000 miles of transmission and distribution lines. “With this new contract, HCL will be investing in both the utilities sector and in Texas, through the development of a worldwide Utilities Center of Expertise in Dallas.

The Center will research and develop technologies to help transform the way energy is generated, marketed and delivered to customers around the world, which fits Oncor’s leadership in advanced Smart Grid technology deployment,” said R Srikrishna, Senior Vice President and Head – Global Sales, HCL Infrastructure Services Division (HCL ISD).

HCL’s scope of work (SoW) will cover end user computing (service desk, desk-side services) for approximately 3,600 employees; datacenter and network Services, business continuity /disaster recovery and consulting services supporting Oncor’s IT infrastructure architecture and platform modernization projects. “Our client services delivery model utilizes local personnel for on-site support, which contributes to local job base stability,” said Todd Crandall, Senior Vice President and Global Head, Energy and Utilities Sector, HCL Axon. “This engagement clearly underlines our commitment and dedicated focus in Texas.”

Now this is interesting they are also utilizing local personnel and following the govt. guidelines as the part of Obama’s initiative to save jobs and reducing the loss of jobs due to off-shoring – great going. I believe it is necessary – Everything can’t be remote!

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The project is designed to help the DoP, which has been reporting losses to drive revenue and regain market share in different services and products such as bill payment, e-posts, life insurance, money transfer and banking. The technology upgrade would also benefit citizens via speedier banking and insurance services, track and trace abilities and would help the postal department to compete effectively with the local and international courier firms. Accenture would also advise DoP on the development of a wide-area network that helps connect all post offices on which various online services can run.

Krishna G V Giri, who leads Accenture’s Management Consulting practice (Health and Public Service operating group) in the Asia Pacific region said,”Armed with efficiency at DoP, the government will be better positioned to share various social schemes, such as Mahatma National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, with even the most remote citizens.”

- – Source: EconomicTimes

With commonwealth games planning that was going on in the last few years, Department of Post earlier mentioned to make use of their unused or rather less used Post Offices turned into WiFi Centers / Cyber Cafe for the tourists. With Post Offices present almost everywhere, I believe it was the right decision. DoP has many IT Services at their disposal :-

• Internal Mail |
• Sahuliyat HelpDesk |
• A Sluggish looking website |
• A Hindi Website (which as all govt. websites requires fonts) which seems not up to date.
• and last but the most important thing –  Visibility of Internal/official news to the general public over the website which can ultimately become a security threat or a loop hole.

However I think they have taken a right decision, but why NOW ?

– With so many IT services at their disposal! Why did they loose the opportunity cost of not giving the contract earlier to an experienced organization?

– Obviously with all websites / services being maintained by NIC, it’s quite visible the kind of quality they are delivering – Pathetic.

Its for us to decide, whether we allow our hard-earned and payed as Income Tax to let go loose or not, we can see the govt. utilization at some points and its crystal clear about their mis-utilization.

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The  Government of India  has taken following steps to control software piracy. In India, the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) of software is covered under Copyright Law, violation of which attracts both fine and imprisonment on a mandatory basis.
According to the Government, a police officer of the rank of sub-inspector is empowered to seize infringing copies, duplicating and other equipments used for making infringing copies, without a warrant. The ‘Copyright Act’ also prohibits the sale or to give on hire, or offer for sale or hire, any copy of the computer programme without specific authorisation of the Copyright holder.

The Government has also set up a Copyright Enforcement Advisory Council (under MHRD) — the nodal administrative ministry which reviews the progress of enforcement of the Copyright Act and also advises on measures, both on the policy front as well as on the implementation front for its better enforcement. Special cells for monitoring the enforcement of copyright have been set at police headquarters in the states/UTs. Computer software is exempted from customs duty.

The Centre has also instructed various government departments to only use legal copies of software. Ministry of human resource development and department of information technology, Government of India, as well as NASSCOM, will sponsor ‘Software Management Seminars’ to enhance awareness.

“The market competition has also been instrumental in reducing the costs, thus making the products affordable and hence bringing down the piracy. The introduction of software services is another step towards countering piracy,” notes Sachin Pilot, minister of state, ministry of communications and information technology, Government of India.

Well Guys ..The steps have been taken, but it is still duty on our part as well to stop piracy at the individual level at least.

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IBM the computer giant recenty launched the Green Consultancy Service-to help government agencies analyze their environmental impact, boost energy efficiency and reduce global warming activities.
It is  the first consulting service designed to help government organisations analyse energy and water use, assess waste management, evaluate overall environmental impact and develop improvement strategies. The IBM Public Sector Energy and Environment Diagnostic can help governments better understand their overall performance on environmental issues, identify improvements that can increase energy efficiency, reduce environmental impact including greenhouse gas emissions, and help ensure public institutions meet their own rising environmental standards.
IBM developed the diagnostic to help US federal agencies comply with current requirements for broad improvements in efficiency and economy for all environmental, energy and transportation management operations. However, it can be adapted to any future requirements for US government agencies or for use with any other federal, state or municipal government in any country.

“Citizens everywhere are demanding that governments improve efficiency and reduce environmental impact, and public officials at every level are responding by raising standards for how they operate,” said Eric Riddleberger, IBM’s business strategy consulting global leader, who heads up the company’s corporate social responsibility consulting efforts. “Using a comprehensive approach that employs new, smart processes and tools to assess current performance and develop improvements can help public agencies meet those standards while maintaining proper levels of public service.”

The IBM Public Sector Energy and Environment Diagnostic offering uses a proprietary Heat Map tool to provide an initial analysis. Based on IBM’s Component Business Model approach, the tool breaks organisations down into logical segments — finance, operations, procurement, etc. — and then provides an analysis as to how well they are performing in terms of efficiency, cost and environmental impact.

Areas for potential environmental improvement are colour coded — red for “most critical”, yellow for “moderately critical”, and green for “performing within guidelines” — to help government institutions prioritise where to make changes. From there, IBM can assist government agencies in developing a comprehensive strategy for prioritising and implementing those changes, accounting for the cost and benefit of each solution.

Specific areas addressed in the diagnostic are

• environmental management systems
• energy and greenhouse gases; water management
• waste and disposal; facilities and equipment
• workforce programmes

The Public Sector Energy and Environment Diagnostic joins a growing portfolio of consulting offerings from IBM designed to help clients address CSR issues throughout their operations, including: the CSR Assessment and Benchmarking Utility, the Carbon Tradeoff Modeller, Green Sigma, Environmental Product Lifecycle Management, the Supply Chain Network Optimisation Workbench (or SNOW) and Strategic Carbon Management.

The public sector diagnostic is designed to be used together with many of these other offerings. For example, after completing an analysis and identifying areas for improvement with the public sector diagnostic, clients can use Green Sigma, which applies Lean Six Sigma principles to measuring and monitoring energy and water usage throughout a organisation’s operations, and the Carbon Trade-off Modeller, which helps evaluate and balance carbon dioxide emissions and energy usage with other key factors throughout a supply chain — cost, service and quality.

These offerings use “smart” approaches, such as advanced business processes and monitoring dashboards, which allow clients to collect and analyse large amounts of data to make better decisions.

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But the point to be noted here your honor is

• People do the search,
• Google pays money for the ads clicked on the searched results

For all the .GOV.IN and .NIC.IN government websites, who takes the money ? I just want to know who’s the person? Is it the government using its own code to place search engines and getting all the money or is it some one else? We’ve got 2 options to find it out..

• Keep Thinking – You’ll never know!
• File an RTI – Let’s see If I’m able to do so!

Till then keep thinking!

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“The Google Earth is providing high resolution data in the order of less than a metre. But the data is two to three years old. It cannot be of much use for any real-time exercise. But Bhuvan will provide the relevant data for any real-time exercise,” S K Pathan, Head, Geo Informatics Data Division, ISRO, said.

Bhuvan, to be launched by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), will be a better alternative to Google Earth in terms of quality of data, he said.

“Bhuvan, which means earth, will get the images from the satellites and provide high resolution imagery data of the order of five metre. This can be of use for real-time exercises like disaster management and military operations,” he said.

For real-time exercises, the latest data is a guiding force, he said. It can show the topography, altitude, depth and other features of any specific location.

“This information will be required when you are undertaking a massive exercise like flood management or post-cyclone disaster mitigation,” he said.

The data could be of use to manage public services, internal security, town planning and infrastructure development activities.

Courtesy: The Hindu

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The Chennai Agriculture Department has created a record by producing more than 10 tonnes of paddy per hectare in select pockets in the State by adopting the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) technique. The average productivity in the State is 4 to 5 tonnes per hectare. The maximum yield was achieved by a farmer in Tiruvannamalai district, who had harvested 14.27 tonnes per hectare and by another farmer in Kallakurichi in Villupuram district whose per hectare yield was 13.38 tonnes.

I was happy to notice, at least some universities are actually progressed on the practical front, rather than disillusioning students with theoretical-memory-intensive-exhaustive-exam

s.

This, according to department officials … claimed that it was a phenomenal record as the average productivity was less than 3 tonnes in the country…Continuous monitoring by the officials and agriculture scientists of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) and the cooperation of the farmers resulted in the high yield …technique had proved to enhance rice productivity by 30 to 40 %per cent with comparatively less water, the is taking steps to popularize it for large-scale adoption.

Well, I was searching through sites and other places for the theory of this efficient technique when I landed here. One can find wealth of resources here. One of being the presentation down below. I’ve just uploaded the pdf version as is, so that people can view the presentation right away. Its a very enlightening presentation, gives a very good view point of what SRI is, and focus on statistics and yield improvement following the practice.

The SRI technique requires considerably less amount of following than that would have taken in the conventional methods -

• Seeds,
• Fertilizers,
• Labour,
• Water
• Nursery area.

On an average, a farmer could save at least Rs.1,600 per hectare by adopting the technique, the officials said.

Sources:

• The Hindu (Google) <|> HinduOnNet (Google)
• System of Rice Intensification <|> SRI, India Specific
• SRI India

I find The Hindu only one country newspaper which is keeping a track of all the developments in Indian agriculture at least SRI very-very closely. Just final closing words, I went to the Department of Agriculture, Andhra Pradesh Website and took some stats from there -

• Achievement of Action Plan 2007-08
  • Organized 3,557 demonstrations on SRI @ 100 ha area per demonstration
• Action Plan 2008-09
  • Demonstration on 0.4 Ha of Land area, each costing Rs. 3000/- per demonstrations.
  • It is planned to organize 1680 demonstrations with an estimated cost of Rs. 50.40 lakhs during the eleventh plan period.

I also went to the Tamil Nadu’s State Agriculture Website, but didn’t find an English version (that’s one), the other being no published document called ‘action plan‘. The best of all, the State Agricultural departmental webiste is not even listed on the department wise list of state website.

I think all the government have short-comings here or there! Anyways, I’m tired of the websites being created by NIC. They are worst ever Govt. websites in the whole damn world. I’ve an article kept in the draft mode for quite long time focused on technical shortcoming HOLES in NIC run websites, I will soon publish it.

Namaskaar for now!

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L.K. Advani on Google Ads

The whole solution (except the blog) powered by Tetrain Information Services, I still remember this co., in 2006 I saw the website came to know about the first ever technical support for Open Source products in India (esp. Linux). The co. has expanded to more Open Source, see their website and you’ll know instantly. Convincing politicians to have their presence felt on the Internet is quite a deal. At least, if not monetary they would be getting some personal corporate benefits for sure.

Well here’s a quick view on the solution by Tetrain, easy to decode .

Joomla! Admin Panel - LKAdvani.in

Joomla! CMS (The main website)

• Chronoforms for feedback
• A Custom theme
• Custom Slide rotators

Blog Powered by WordPress

Forum powered by phpBB

Forum Statistics at the time of writing this post: Total posts 2562 • Total topics 1080 • Total members 1655

The wholes website is powered by Open Source softwares. At least at one point, I think people take good decision, I’m talking about the Tetrain and NOT Mr. Advani. Well, Mr. Advani is online, the site has a lot of feedback points. I’m just worried that  ..

are these feedbacks even read ?

I’m (100*100)% sure that these contents are part of SEO tricks by the undertaking organization.

• Flood site with all Goodie, Goodie contents : Some of them even without consent of Mr. Advani.
• I would hardly dream of Mr. Advani going through his websites or the comments of his blogs,
• Assuming he does, he is sure to go for hard-paged prints, coupled with the invaluable excuse of the falling short of time to view his own website/blog/forum. They all are the same Environmental Suckers.

• FACT: There is no post on the forum that has a user named ‘advani‘ or even a part of it. As for now, its all other users who are posting and consoling each other, and if my gut feeling is intact, its the same old trick, creating fake user accounts and starting of the with the posts – impersonating.

Anyways, I would be signing off!

Jai Hind!

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Well I won’t be wasting your time, for those who are really interested here’s a Crash Course on what is all about -

It’s a 6 Months course, training 100 People (by the end of second year) on FOSS Technologies & Soft Skills. These people & their skills would then be utilized in Governmental > e-governance projects.

• Application Fee: Rs 500/-
• Mode of Application: Form, Online
• Course fee: Rs 50,000/-
• Reservation: 20% for SC/ST Candidates
• Eligibility Criteria: B.Tech/B.E.(CSE/IT/EC/EE) /MCA/M.Sc.(CS/IT)
• Current Intake: 25
• Selection Criteria: “Marks Obtained + Interview” | Selection at National Level
• Campus: ITeS Habitat, Jawaharlal Nehru International Stadium

Well, my take on it: If you have 15 Degree of inclination of Open Source, Go for it. I have seen the Kerala Govt. involvement with Open Source since the days Red Hat got real HOT! at least in 2006 during Linux Asia Conference in New Delhi. Kerala Govt. has it’s people use Red Hat’s Desktop Linux in their Office, and believe me to a Linux user – Windows is a child’s play.

I would sure be monitoring this course, for some time. Till then Adios, namaskaar.

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