The first article is a case study on the Janchetna ("Public Consciousness") project implemented in Hardoi district of Uttar Pradesh, India. The article illustrates how important it is for the governments to share information with citizens and at the same time, to provide citizens a public grievance redressal mechanism to give feedback to the Government on governance issues such as implementation of development schemes and utilization of public funds. The project facilitates citizen-centric services through an online grievance redressal portal accessed from Janchetna kiosks. Janchetna has brought about a well appreciated transparency to the working of the district administration, and its success demonstrates how widespread awareness combined with a strongly formulated public opinion can go a long way in the fight against corruption. The project is also an outstanding example of a highly cost-efficient, economically self-reliant and user-financed community network that works on an innovative operational model requiring no investments and operational support from the government, generates its own funds from the citizens, and contributes to the earnings of the kiosk operators.
The second article “ICTs as Enablers of Process Change in Agriculture" by V. Shunmugam and Sarita Bahl advises that for an ICT initiative to succeed in driving development of agriculture, it is necessary to make the service delivery holistic and two-way. Instead of simply replicating the piecemeal initiatives that have already been taken up in rural areas by several entities and have largely focused on agricultural knowledge dissemination and providing price information, there should be an attempt to reduce costs of implementation, improve access to technology, inputs, capital and markets, and to leverage these initiatives and integrate them towards the common national development goal.
Ranjan Vaidya's case study on "Computerization of Agricultural Marketing Board" describes and compares the process of selling produce that a farmer has to undergo in a typical mandi (agricultural market) and one in which certain operations have been computerised. The article is based on observations gathered during the author's field visits to certain mandis administered by the Agricultural Marketing Board (also referred to as the Mandi Board) in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. The author concludes that end-to-end computerization of processes, process reengineering and appropriate legislative reforms are necessary in order to harness the full potential of an ICT intervention.
The next article by Anusha Lall and Swati Sahi describe the LifeLines India Initiative launched by OneWorld International in collaboration with British Telecom and CISCO. The project was originally designed to deliver critical information pertaining to agriculture and animal husbandry to farmers in rural India via a digital platform, using the telephone as a primary medium for information access and use. But its success in these areas have led to the project being extended to the field of education, and its replication in Nepal and Sri Lanka is also being explored. This article is followed by Mahesh Acharya's piece on Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs), which attempt to make best use of the most widely available but least explored communication technology - the radio - to offer radio broadcast services for farming communities. The article describes the cumbersome government procedures and the content creation guidelines that KVKs have to follow for setting up a community radio, which limit their widespread growth and affect their sustainability in the long run. Ron Hebert's article discusses the 'Economics of Health Informatics' in developed and developing countries, replication of Health Information Systems in public and private hospitals of developing countries, and highlights a few lessons from ICT based health initiatives functioning in different countries.
Arvindd Narayanan and Gaurav Chakraverty's article is an abstract of the unpublished manual compiled by the authors on “Running ICT Telecenters in Rural India”. The manual attempts to lay down guidelines to be followed by professionals handling operations of these networks, so as to enable a better success rate and low burnout. It has been compiled on the basis of the authors’ understanding of hurdles faced by community and telecenter operators gained through their field experience of working with them. This is followed by a report on the two-day "Workshop on Impact Assessment of e-Governance Projects" that was jointly organised by the Department of Information Technology (DIT) and the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA). The workshop was attended by 68 participants including senior officials from state governments and the Government of India, academicians, and representatives of market research agencies that had been involved in the impact assessment study undertaken by DIT.
The conference report is followed by a brief note on the launch of a portal by the UK Department for International Development's Knowledge and Research programme in coordination with the Centre for Development Informatics at the University of Manchester. The project focuses on providing useful material in the form of books, audio-visual presentations and case studies that could help women-based ICT enterprises to gain comprehensive knowledge on how to start, manage and evaluate the project. Other news articles announce the launch of new e-government initiatives in India such as the E-Gram Vishwa Gram project in the state of Gujarat, and the introduction of a facility for property tax payment via mobile phones by the Municipal Corporation of Mumbai.
Conference announcements include the annual International Conference on E-government and E-governance to be held in Turkey in 2009, followed by the IT Web eGovernment 2009 conference to be held in South Africa. These two conferences will focus on the fundamental shift that is taking place in governments across the world, with the need for governments to be adaptive to a virtual, global, knowledge-based digital economy. The other conferences include the 3rd International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD2009) to be held in Qatar, the 10th IFIP Conference whose theme is "Assessing the Contribution of ICT to Development Goals", eLearning Africa 2009 to be held in Dakar, Senegal and eINDIA 2009.
