What is Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP)?
"Given a finite number of "cities" along with the cost of travel
between each pair of them, find the cheapest way of visiting all the
cities and returning to your starting point."
What does the Website Offer?
It reports on its ongoing project to solve large-scale instances of
the TSP.
The Best Tour of World TSP
The best tour for the World TSP of length 7,516,122,185 was found by
Keld Helsgaun, an associate professor in computer science at Roskilde
university, Denmark (http://www.akira.ruc.dk/~keld/) on July 26, 2004
using a variant of his Lin-Kernighan travelling salesman heuristic
(LKH) algorithm.
For details, check
World TSP
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia
http://www.tsp.gatech.edu/.
Dr D.C.Misra
September 9, 2004
However, the reality is quite the opposite. In most of our cities,
cybercafes run by small businessmen are fair game for corrupt cops
and municipal employees, and this situation is bolstered by badly
thought out laws and confusion born in the common perception that
computer based connectivity is a rich person's plaything, used mainly
for surfing illicit materials and for anti-national activities.
The latter perception is particularly galling, since cops and
bureaucrats never seem to pause to think about how their own
perversion of the country's laws are more anti-national than picking
up a gun and holding a state to ransom can be.
My questions to this forum are: what can be done about this, and how
can we participate?
fyi, there is a thriving discussion of cyber related legal matters at
cyberlaw-india@yahoogroups.com and about connectivity matters in
general at india-gii@.... Please do go through the archives to
see previous discussions on this matter.
At 8:51 AM +0530 9/9/04, anant trivedi wrote:
>I agree with your analysis. This should be one of the ways of
>providing internet access to the segment of population which for a
>variety of reasons cannot have their own internet connectivity. But
>the support needs to thought out in order to target those in need.
>
>anant
> ----- Original Message -----
> My Reply:
>
> In brief, Vikram Doctor appears to be saying that cyber cafes
>within a decade of their start are on way out in the West while in
>India their number is going up.
>
> My view: It is understandable that the cyber cafes are on way out
>in the West as there is high Internet accessibility in the West. As
>a result an individual need not go to a cyber cafe to access the
>Web. He can simply access the Web at home. On the other hand, due to
>very low Internet penetration in India and high cost of Internet
>connectivity, common citizens have no choice but to access the
>Internet from a cyber cafe. Public policies must therefore support
>cyber cafes in India by providing a number of incentives for setting
>them up. This will also provide gainful employment to India's
>unemployed and educated youth.I hope the position is clear.
>
> Dr D.C.Misra
> September 8, 2004
>
> Comment by Shri Santosh Rajan:
>
> it is a little confusing
>
> what is your point and what is the point raised by the author
--
Vickram
I agree with your analysis. This should be one of the ways of providing internet
access to the segment of population which for a variety of reasons cannot have
their own internet connectivity. But the support needs to thought out in order
to target those in need.
anant
----- Original Message -----
From: santosh rajan
To: cyberquiz@...
Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2004 5:07 PM
Subject: Re: [cyberquiz] Recommended Reading-1: ICT-1: Cyber Cafe
My Reply:
In brief, Vikram Doctor appears to be saying that cyber cafes within a decade
of their start are on way out in the West while in India their number is going
up.
My view: It is understandable that the cyber cafes are on way out in the West
as there is high Internet accessibility in the West. As a result an individual
need not go to a cyber cafe to access the Web. He can simply access the Web at
home. On the other hand, due to very low Internet penetration in India and high
cost of Internet connectivity, common citizens have no choice but to access the
Internet from a cyber cafe. Public policies must therefore support cyber cafes
in India by providing a number of incentives for setting them up. This will also
provide gainful employment to India's unemployed and educated youth.I hope the
position is clear.
Dr D.C.Misra
September 8, 2004
Comment by Shri Santosh Rajan:
it is a little confusing
what is your point and what is the point raised by the author
Regards
Santosh
"Dr D.C.Misra" <dc_misra@...> wrote:
Read
Doctor, Vikram (2004): Digital Drift: A decade on, the cyber cafe
rocks in India, rolls out of fashion in the West, The Economic Times,
New Delhi, September 5, Sunday, pp 1&3.
Available online under the caption:Cyber cafe goes cold in the West at
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/839542.cms
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Dr D.C.Misra's Reply
You are right, Arnab. A lot remains to be done for the cyber cafe in India,
particularly in rural areas.There is an Association of Public Internet Access
Provider (http://www.apiap.cybernook.net).It is for such organisations and
similar collective entities to put forward proposals to government for promotion
of cyber cafes in India.
Dr D.C.Misra
September 8, 2004
_______________________________________________________________________________
Arnab Gaguly wrote:
I have read through the article and believe that Cyber cafe may be passe in the
Western World but in India its still a business model which is providing a lot
of opportunities to the educated unemployed youths.But at the same time we must
realize that this model to really fructify cyber cafes should move towards
smaller towns and cities where the value emanated down the value chain would be
much higher.In fact, the productivity in the rural areas would also improve to
greater levels with such model (though I don't have any concrete study to
substantiate this).But the million dollar question is the government doing
enough to create/promote such businesses in the rural areas ? It could make all
the difference of providing ICT to the rural masses.
Arnab Ganguly
Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management,Pune
______________________________________________________________________________
Dr D.C.Misra's Reply to comments by Santosh Rajan:
In brief, Vikram Doctor appears to be saying that cyber cafes within a decade of
their start are on way out in the West while in India their number is going up.
My view: It is understandable that the cyber cafes are on way out in the West as
there is high Internet accessibility in the West. As a result an individual need
not go to a cyber cafe to access the Web. He can simply access the Web at home.
On the other hand, due to very low Internet penetration in India and high cost
of Internet connectivity, common citizens have no choice but to access the
Internet from a cyber cafe. Public policies must therefore support cyber cafes
in India by providing a number of incentives for setting them up. This will also
provide gainful employment to India's unemployed and educated youth.I hope the
position is clear.
Dr D.C.Misra
September 8, 2004
_______________________________________________________________________________
santosh rajan <santosh30339@...> wrote:
it is a little confusing
what is your point and what is the point raised by the author
Santosh
________________________________________________________________________________
"Dr D.C.Misra" <dc_misra@...> wrote:
Read
Doctor, Vikram (2004): Digital Drift: A decade on, the cyber cafe
rocks in India, rolls out of fashion in the West, The Economic Times,
New Delhi, September 5, Sunday, pp 1&3.
Available online under the caption:Cyber cafe goes cold in the West at
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/839542.cms
---------------------------------
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To visit your group on the web, go to:
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To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
My Reply:
In brief, Vikram Doctor appears to be saying that cyber cafes within a decade of
their start are on way out in the West while in India their number is going up.
My view: It is understandable that the cyber cafes are on way out in the West as
there is high Internet accessibility in the West. As a result an individual need
not go to a cyber cafe to access the Web. He can simply access the Web at home.
On the other hand, due to very low Internet penetration in India and high cost
of Internet connectivity, common citizens have no choice but to access the
Internet from a cyber cafe. Public policies must therefore support cyber cafes
in India by providing a number of incentives for setting them up. This will also
provide gainful employment to India's unemployed and educated youth.I hope the
position is clear.
Dr D.C.Misra
September 8, 2004
Comment by Shri Santosh Rajan:
it is a little confusing
what is your point and what is the point raised by the author
Regards
Santosh
"Dr D.C.Misra" <dc_misra@...> wrote:
Read
Doctor, Vikram (2004): Digital Drift: A decade on, the cyber cafe
rocks in India, rolls out of fashion in the West, The Economic Times,
New Delhi, September 5, Sunday, pp 1&3.
Available online under the caption:Cyber cafe goes cold in the West at
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/839542.cms
TOP 20
UNIVERSITIES IN THE WORLD
Q 1 Which are top 20 universities in the world?
Ans Here is the table compiled from the source cited below:
Table: Top 20 Universities in the world 2004
1
Harvard University
100.0
USA
2
Stanford University
77.2
USA
3
University of Cambridge
76.2
USA
4
University of California, Berkeley
74.2
USA
5
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
72.4
USA
6
California Institute of Technology
69.0
USA
7
Princeton University
63.6
USA
8
University of Oxford
61.4
UK
9
Columbia University
61.2
USA
10
University of Chicago
60.5
USA
11
Yale University
58.6
USA
12
Cornell University
55.5
USA
13
University of California, San Diego
53.8
USA
14
Tokyo University
51.9
Japan
15
University of Pennsylvania
51.8
USA
16
University of California, Los Angeles
51.6
USA
17
University of California, San Francisco
50.8
USA
18
University of Wisconsin, Madison
50.0
USA
19
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
49.3
USA
20
University of Washington, Seattle
49.1
USA
Note: Figures show the overall score. For the methodology, see the source
cited below.
Source: Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University 2004,
http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2004/top500list.htm
(accessed: September 7, 2004)
Q2 What is noteworthy?
Ans In top 20 universities, 17 belong to the USA, 2 to the UK (Cambridge
and Oxford) and one to Japan (Tokyo).
Q3 Which are top five countries having the maximum number of
countries in top 500 universities worldwide?
Ans 1. United States – 170
2. United Kingdom – 42
3. Japan – 36
4. Germany – 43
5. Canada – 23
[Figures show the number of universities among top 500].
Q4 What about India?
Ans India has only 3 universities in top 500 universities worldwide:
1. IISc, Bangalore (rank 202-301)
http://www.iisc.ernet.in
2. IIT, Kharagpur (rank 404-502)
http://www.iitkgp.ernet.in
3. University of Calcutta (rank 404-502)
http://www.caluniv.ac.in
Q5 What about ranking of universities in information and communication
technology (ICT)?
Ans Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), which
has actually ranked 1,000 universities but has published only the top 500 list,
does propose to come out with a list on engineering (technology) but has no
plans to come out with any subject or discipline or programme specific list.
The Economist (London), in its issue of September 4th-10th 2004 has come out,
based upon above ranking, a chart on top 20 universities under its Economic and
Financial Indicators column (p-104). Check the chart at
http://www.economist.com/markets/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3154661.
Founded in 1896, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU)
is one of the oldest universities in China. Visit its following website for
further details of the ranking:
http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2004/2004Main.htm
Dr D.C.Misra
September 7, 2004
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Read
Doctor, Vikram (2004): Digital Drift: A decade on, the cyber cafe
rocks in India, rolls out of fashion in the West, The Economic Times,
New Delhi, September 5, Sunday, pp 1&3.
Available online under the caption:Cyber cafe goes cold in the West at
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/839542.cms
My comments:
Mistake 1: Make no first mistake. Cyber cafes are not only going to
stay here in India but bloom very vigorously in times to come as more
and more (public and private) services go online.
Mistake 2: Make no second mistake. The number of cyber cafes is
inversely proportional to a country's ICT prosperity. So no reason to
celebrate if you have more cyber cafes.
Factoid 1: India already has the highest number of cyber cafes in the
world.
Factoid 2: India does not have the highest cyber café density in
the world. The distinction goes to Senegal.
Forecast for India: India is going to remain the World Champion in
the highest number of cyber cafes for a very long time to come.
Lesson for the Developing World: Any one who backs cyber café is
on the right track. Cyber cafes are the prime accelerator for
accelerating the pace of ongoing ICT revolution and hold tremendous
employment potential. They alone can take the benefits of ICTs to the
remotest part of the country.
They are in the first decade of 21st century what the transistor
radio was in 1960s and 19700s in India.
D.C.Misra
New Delhi
September 6, 2004
FROM MY BOOKSHELF-1:eGov-1 (Vesion 3: Full Version): Review of
Bhatnagar (2004 Sage) by Dr D.C.Misra
Book Review of
Bhatnagar, Subhash (2004): E-Government: From Vision to
Implementation: A Practical Guide with Case Studies, New Delhi,
Sage.202 pp with Bibliography and Index.
This book review is available in this forum under three versions:
Version 1: In A Nutshell
Version 2: Abridged Version
Version 3: Full Version
This post carries Version 3: Full Version
____________________________________________________________________
BOOK REVIEW
by Dr D.C.Misra*
(Version 3: Full Version)
_____________________________________________________________________
E-GOVERNMENT CALLS FOR FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION:
CASE STUDIES SHOW THE WAY
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
--- T.S.Eliot (1934)
Citizens are the e-government experts.
--- PCIP (2002)
The book**, according to the author, is a result of the two years of
intensive work done at the World Bank in which the field experience
had to be distilled and communicated to the Bank staff through
workshops and training programmes. The book claims to
provide <practical insights for IT professionals, civil servants
and managers from multilateral institutions interested in the
implementation of e-government>,and is intended to serve as
<a practical guide for developing e-government at a local, state
or national level>.The author, who has been a professor of
information systems at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
(IIMA),currently shuttles between Ahmedabad (for teaching and
research at IIMA) and Washington, D.C. (for leading an initiative on
E-Government at the World Bank) (see his detailed bio at
http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/~subhash/).The book is organised in seven
chapters.
Chapter 1 deals with definition and scope of e-government. Here the
author gives, what may be called by now the conventional definition
of e-government (which I call Level I definition, necessary but not
sufficient, for e-governance; see Misra 2004) and draws distinction
between e-government and e-governance, noting the well-known, oft-
repeated four-stage evolution of e-government, namely, Web Presence
- Limited Interactions - Transactions - Transformation. The
evolutionary stages are also in increasing order of difficulty.
Examples thus abound in the first stage of Web presence (There are
very few countries now which do not have Web presence) while we have
limited examples of fourth stage of transformation (for example, the
Bhoomi project in Karnataka which derecognised manual land records
one fine morning (a case of limited transformation) or eCitizen
portal in Singapore which is related to life episodes of a citizen (a
case of total transformation).
Chapter 2 focuses on understanding e-government in developing
countries. Here the author enumerates some of the documented case
studies of e-government applications from different developing
countries classifying them in four categories of (i) delivering
citizen services, (ii) delivery of services to business and industry,
(iii) increased efficiency within government, and (iv) empowering
citizens through access to information. He then enumerates seven key
trends of e-government in developing countries.
Chapter 3 deals with potential benefits and impact of e-government.
Here the author enumerates, among other things, the well-known
potential benefits of e-government, namely, increasing transparency,
reducing administrative corruption, improving service delivery,
improving civil service performance, empowerment and improving
government finances, and cites examples to illustrate his claims. He
concludes that <The scope of e-government as it is implemented
today is not wide enough to have generated a macro-level impact that
is discernable through aggregate indicators. In vestments in e-
government are relatively small to have created such a macro
impact>.(p-60).
This, of course, is true. However, e-government should not, and
cannot, be separated from the wider context of information and
communication technology (ICT) for Development (ICT4D). Only in its
narrow view e-government is concerned with its internal (relating to
bureaucracies) and external (relating to citizens) practices and
processes. When we say <We don't need more government or
less government, we need better government>.(Holmes 2001, p-1)
(emphasis original), the endorsement becomes a reinforcement of sorts
for the status quo, howsoever unsatisfactory. E-government then
ceases to be an instrument for any radical transformation of
governance and becomes, at the best, merely an attempt at incremental
improvement in government practices and processes.
In its broader view, which this reviewer espouses, e-government has
to be viewed as an instrument for development in new economy
(characterised by globalisation and emergence of ICT). The real
challenge of e-government thus lies in this broader
conceptualisation - treating it as a development resource and
preparing us to face the challenges of governance in the 21st
century. And by way of caution, it should not be forgotten that, as
reported by Clarke (2003, Box 1, p-5),<The new economy provides
opportunities for development but also poses new dangers such as
widening of the digital gap between rich and poor>.
What is of great concern to e-government policy makers and
practitioners is the estimate that a vast majority of e-government
projects is total or partial failure. Heeks (2003, p-2) has, for
example, reported that as many as 35 percent e-government projects
for development are total failures, 50 percent are partial failures
and only 15 percent e-government projects are successes. The book
under review also makes a note of this estimate at the outset (p-17)
but ignores to look into these alarming statistics, entailing a wide
variety of heavy costs, despite being concerned with e-government
case studies. Heeks (2004, p-2), does, however, propose an answer by
viewing e-government as <a global project of technology
transfer>.
Chapter 4 attempts to provide guidelines, based on a dozen case
studies, for implementing e-government projects successfully. These
guidelines, however, fail to stimulate thinking or inspire action as
e-government projects are not only location-specific but also sector-
pacific requiring development of location- or sector-specific
planning and implementation, as the case may be. Moreover these
guidelines, generalised on the basis of mere dozen case studies,
unnecessarily circumscribe the domain of e-government, denying
insights from e-government projects in other locations and sectors.
Chapter 5 makes a more ambitious attempt to provide guidelines for
designing a country-wide strategy for e-government. Here it is
necessary to distinguish between strategy and policy. Governments
seldom, if at all, design a strategy but they do, however, typically
develop policies which usually take into account issues, among
others, of resource constraints and equity. The author also appears
to advocate launching of <small-scale quick-strike> projects,
as distinct from pilot projects, for their demonstration effect.
Experience, however, does not appear to support this prescription.
In India, for example, the computerised railway reservation system,
formally known as Passenger Reservation System (PRS), by any
reckoning, an outstanding success, and the project, encompassing the
length and breadth of India, can by no means be described as small.
The progress in the project has been gradual € '¶ the pilot was
launched in 1986 (version I) and incremental gains were made in 1987
(version II) and 1990 (version III) with five independent PRS nodes
at Secunderabad, New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai networked on
April 18, 1999. Launched on February 28, 2000, the PRS Web site,
though very badly-designed and user-unfriendly, <has in a very
short span of time become one of the most popular web sites in India,
with peak daily hits of the order of 1.7 million hits per day>.
(CRIS 2004).
The railway reservation portal came into being as a result of public
demand. As such it is an example of demand-driven e-government
(railways are a public monopoly in India) and its success makes the
point that a demand-driven e-government project has a far greater
chance of success than a supply-driven e-government project. It also
underscores the point made by Thornton (1997, p-35) in Rethinking
Government that <In some cases, progress will require that
governments make tough decisions that disrupt status quo or eliminate
entrenched bureaucracies>. Privatisation of Delhi Vidyut Board, a
public electrical utility, is another case in point though private
companies are yet to show any significant improvement either in power
supply or in consumer service.
Chapter 6 purports to be a brief essay on future of e-government. It,
however, appears to be inappropriately titled as no where does it
discuss the <future> of e-government, leave alone make any
informed guesses about it. Instead the author deals here with pious
platitudes like <A major task is to build institutional capacity
for reform>(p-93). True, but how? Any example? As a guide
perhaps,it should have shown the way. On the same page, he states
that <technology is just 20 per cent of the whole effort (Figure
6.2)>. The share of other enablers of e-government are 30 percent
business process reengineering, 40 percent change management and 10
percent managing partners (Figure 6.2, p-93). Elsewhere, however, he
changes these percentages and brings <luck> also into play by
stating the share as 20 percent technology, 35 percent business
process reengineering, 40 percent change management and 5 percent
luck!(Bhatnagar (n.d.),slide 19 of 25). A reader, who is liable to be
confused, is surely also entitled to know the basis of such
quantification failing which the percentages become
<grapevine> statistics circulating among experts (call them
heuristic if you are academically inclined).
Chapter 7, the last chapter, forming nearly half of the book and
which indeed could be said to be the main content of the book,
provides a dozen case studies on e-government <structured in
similar format>. The book, according to the author, <is based
on the analysis of two dozen cases from sixteen countries in the
developing world where e-government has been implemented to address
social and economic development challenges>(p-13). It is not
known as to why the author excluded a dozen cases from the
publication. Even a brief listing of such cases would have helped the
reader better appreciate his analysis. The book is wound up by a
brief bibliography, an annotated list of web resources and an index.
The book revolves round the case studies. The dozen case studies
dealt by the author are: 1. Bhoomi (computerisation of land records
in Karnataka), 2. Gyandoot (community-owned rural internet kiosks in
Madhya Pradesh), 3. CARD (computer-aided registration of deeds in
Andhra Pradesh), 4. FRIENDS (online payments to the government in
Kerala), 5. VOICE (computerised municipal service centres in
Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh), 6. Income Tax (online income tax
administration), 7. eProcurement (experience from the developing
world), 8. Customs (Indian customs online), 9. Interstate Checkposts
(computerised interstate checkposts in Gujarat), 10. SmartGov
(secretariat (sachivalaya) e-application in Andhra Pradesh, 11. QPEN
(anti-corruption project in Seoul), and 12. CVC (an anti-corruption
project in India).The e-government practitioners in India are quite
familiar with these Indian cases due to their frequent coverage in
print media and on the web and non-Indian cases, being remote, are
only of academic curiosity. The cases offered thus fail to excite the
reader.
Pioneered by the Harvard Business School in 1920s, the case method
(HBS 2004) is the mainstay of this well-known business
school€ '²s
management programme (More than 80 percent of HBS classes are built
on the case method and during their 2-year stay at HBS, students
study more than 500 cases). What do we do then with mere dozen cases
in the book under review? Typically, a case is a detailed account of
a real-life situation, <describing the dilemma of the
<protagonist> a real person with a real job who is confronted
with a real problem>(ibid). Again, <Though every case is
different, nearly all center on one overarching question: What should
the protagonist do?>(emphasis original, ibid). No such dilemmas
are posed in the e-government cases given here, considerably reducing
the value of the <Guide> to the e- government practitioners.
The case studies, formally grouped under the title <Case Studies
of Social and Economic Impacts of E-Government>, which appear to
have been undertaken by the author on behalf of the World Bank,
follow a structured format of 1. Application Context, 2. New
Approach, 3.Implementation Challenges, 4. Benefits and Costs, 5.
Potential Future Benefits, and 6. Key Lessons. The structured format,
however,does not have much value to the readers as the cases, being
from varied fields ranging from computerisation of land records in
Karnataka, India to anti-corruption project in Korea, defy
comparison. It would have been better if case studies pertaining to a
specific topic, say, computerisation of land records, a subject of
basic importance in agrarian economies, had been highlighted.
Incidentally a central sector scheme, fully funded by the central
government, ministry of agriculture, in early 1990s on
computerisation of land records in the states laid the foundation for
subsequent blossoming of well-celebrated projects like Bhoomi in
Karnataka.
Technologies, organizations and administrative practices have always
co-evolved (La Porte et al. 2000, p-1). In dramatic numbers, public
organizations in an increasing number of countries are embracing
modern networked communications such as the World Wide Web (the Web),
observe Demchak et al. (1998). In the process, they are creating the
foundations for governance in an information age (ibid). Worldwide,
more than 14,000 government agencies were found online in mid-2000, a
remarkable number given that the World Wide Web is a relatively
recent development. (Norris 2001, p-116). The global average of
government online use has increased from 28 percent in 2002 to 31
percent in 2003 (TNS 2003). By 2003, 91 percent or 173 out of 191
member states of the United Nations had a website presence (DESA
2003, p-14). A survey of 12 developed countries also shows that the
optimists (people who agree that e-government will make government
more efficient and more accountable) outweigh the pessimists (people
who disagree that e-government will make government more efficient
and more accountable) by a significant amount (Accenture 2004).
However, according to Global E-Government, 2002 report, the global e-
government still is in its infancy (West 2002), with developing
countries trailing behind the developed countries.
Bruno Lanvin (2002) in his preface to The E-Government Handbook for
Developing Countries, has noted: <There is no e-government
textbook and no e-government theory; knowledge comes from practice;
excellence comes from best practices>.(CDT 2002). But then one
is reminded of English poet T.S.Eliot's oft-quoted lines:
<Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the
knowledge we have lost in information?> The pearls of wisdom in
case studies are often hidden in, following Harvard terminology
again, the <cold-questions> which trigger thinking (and thus hopefully
prepare practitioners for action). No <cold questions> are
found in the routinised presentation of case studies in this book
under review,designated <structured format> by the author.
The publication of a book on e-government, however, does draw our
attention to the present e-government scenario in India which does
not appear to be very assuring. A compilation on <Problems of
Governance in South Asia> bought out by a New Delhi-based think
tank,for example, states that <While other regions of the world,
even the developed countries like the U.S., are not free from
<misgovernance>, South Asia has the dubious distinction of
being both poor and misgoverned>. (Pai Panandiker (ed.) 2000,
p-xi).Although published in 2000, when e-government had already taken
off in India with a bang, there is no mention of <e-government>
(or any of its variants)anywhere in the book leave alone a
contribution on it,despite the compilation being edited by an eminent
scholar and commentator on current affairs and coming out of a
reputed think tank in India!
Dawn of new public management (NPM) in developed countries in 1980s
calling for large-scale privatisation of public services has also, by
and large, left the developing countries untouched, notwithstanding
its advocates like Chakravarty (2004), who has been drawing our
attention to NPM now and then in print media. His advocacy of NPM
has, however, invited a rebuttal from Heine (2004) who has, based on
experience in Chile where NPM was applied with a vengeance from 1973
to 1989, contended that <The wave of the present, and of the
future,lies not in simply dismantling government in the somewhat
naïve belief that the problems will take care of themselves. They
won't>. And Heine is right. Past record in governance
supports him. Osborne and Gaebler (1992) who made an inspiring call
for re-inventing government and came out with an apparently
convincing agenda to make government community-owned, competitive,
mission-driven, results-oriented, customer-driven, enterprising,
anticipatory, decentralised and market-oriented, also failed to make
any impact on policy makers in administrative reforms in developing
countries.
Yet changes are taking place in developing countries, albeit at a
slow pace. Acceptance of e-government and its large-scale
introduction in developing countries is just one example of the
changes taking place. Why then has the e-government scenario in
India, a leading developing country, become suddenly so uninspiring?
It is not that the governments at the centre as well as in the
states have not made necessary commitments to e-government. For
example, 28 state/union territory governments have formulated
information technology (IT) policies and are executing them (DIT
2004a). Similarly, the central government has formulated an ambitious
National e-Governance Action Plan (2003-2007), which includes 22
mission mode projects, and is implementing the action plan (DIT
2004b).
Substantial investments in e-government too are being made. For
example, the central government proposed a total outlay of Rs 2,550
crore ($560 million) in 2003 for the national plan of e-governance.
Nasscom (National Association of Software and Service Companies), New
Delhi has predicted that state governments will spend close to a
staggering Rs 15,000 crore on computing their operations over the
next five years. (FE 2004). Nevertheless, despite sound objectives
and substantial investment, the progress of e-government in India
appears to have lost its initial momentum and the progress is also
not uniform across the states.
What could then be the reason? The answer perhaps lies in e-
government leadership. An OECD symposium on Government of the Future:
Getting from Here to There noted: <Leaders within government are
key to bridging the gap between the development and implementation of
reform> (OECD 2000, p-15). A Roadmap for E-Government in the
Developing World rightly notes that <E-leaders must not only
support e-government initiatives with words but also with actions
>(PCIP 2002, p-11). Caldow (2003), however, appears to have the
final words when she observes <It takes strong and sustained
leadership to reshape institutions>,and <Until leaders are
willing to inspire fundamental reform, e-government will remain
unfulfilled,an elusive concept>.
The potential for e-government in developing countries remains
largely unexploited (Ndou 2004, p-1). E-government in India has
reached a critical phase to-day. The first e-wave (1998-2004) of e-
government has ebbed. It lost, for example, its e-champions like the
former Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. It also lost
India's <IT poster boy>, Dewang Mehta, who made Indians
feel that,with some justification no doubt, that <I> in
<IT> stood for <India>.The first e-wave also bypassed the
populous north India, often referred to as the <cow-belt> in
media, with the sole exception of IT enclave of Delhi but then
it is the national capital territory.The second e-wave (2004 - ) of e-
government, yet to take off, is thus in desperate need of a new band
of e-government leaders to give it requisite momentum. Any takers?
Sage India, which has already earned a well-deserved reputation for
quality publications in social sciences including publications on
information technology (IT), needs to be congratulated for bringing
out this timely publication on e-government. We hope more books on e-
government will follow from this stable. Reasonably priced and well
produced, the book should be read by all concerned with e-government
in developing countries. The writer too needs to be congratulated for
making a noteworthy contribution to the limited but growing
literature on e-government in developing countries.
References
Accenture (2004): eGovernment Leadership: High Performance, Maximum
Value, May, The Government Executive Series, available
http://a456.g.akamai.net/7/456/1701/5e33f326cdecd2/www.accenture.com/x
doc/en/industries/government/gove_egov_value.pdf (accessed July 26,
2004)
Bhatnagar, Subhash (n.d.): Enabling E-Government in Developing
Countries: From Vision to Implementation (presentation), available
http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/egov/lweek/Bhatnagar.pdf
(accessed July 26, 2004)
Caldow, Janet (2003): Lessons from Around the World, excerpted from
Delivery, Transformation, Measurement: Essays on 21st Century
Governance, Caspian Publishing Ltd., London, 2003, Available:
http://www-1.ibm.com/industries/government/ieg/pdf/lessonworld.pdf
(accessed July 18, 2004).
CDT (Center for Democracy & Technology) (2002): The E-Government
Handbook for Developing Countries, Washington, D.C., the Author.
November. A project of InfoDev and Center for Democracy & Technology,
available: http://www.cdt.org/egov/handbook/2002-11-
14egovhandbook.pdf (accessed: July 25, 2004).
Chakraverti, Sauvik (2004): Management Mantras: Make Way for New
Public Administration, The Times of India, New Delhi, July 14, p-18,
Wednesday.
Clarke, Matthew (2003): e-development? Development and the New
Economy, Helsinki, Finland, United Nations University / World
Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU/WIDER), Policy
Brief 7, December, available:
http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/publications.htm (accessed:
July 25, 2004).
CRIS (Centre for Railways Information System), Indian Railways, New
Delhi (2004): Indian Railway€ '²s Reservation Enquiry Web Site,
at
http://www.indianrail.gov.in/ (accessed July 26, 2004).
Demchak, Chris C., Christian Friis and Todd M. La Porte (1998):
Reflections on Configuring Public Agencies on Cyberspace: A
Conceptual Investigation, University of Arizona, Cyberspace Policy
Research Group (CyPRC), available:
http:// www.cyprg.arizona.edu/publications/reflect.rft (accessed July
27, 2004). Published in Snellen, I.Th.M. and W.B.H.T.van de Donk
(eds.) (1998): Public Administration in an Information Age: A
Handbook, Amsterdam, IOS Press, pp 225-244.
DESA (Department of Economic and Social Affairs), United Nations
(2003): World Public Sector Report 2003: E-Government at the
Crossroads, New York, the Author. October. ST/ESA/TAD/SER.E/49.
Available (only for viewing):
http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan012733.p
df (accessed July 23, 2004).
DIT (Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications
and Information Technology, Government of India, Centre for E-
Governance) (2004a): State IT Policy, available:
http://egov.mit.gov.in/ceg1/index.asp (accessed July 19, 2004).
DIT (Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications
and Information Technology, Government of India) (2004b): National e-
Governance Action Plan, available:
http://egov.mit.gov.in/actionplan/about.asp (accessed July 19, 2004).
FE (The Financial Express) (2004): Convergence: E-gov Spend To Touch
Rs 15,000 Cr: Nasscom, New Delhi, April 13, Tuesday, available:
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=56958
(accessed July 19, 2004).
HBS (Harvard Busuness School) (2004): The Case Method, at
http://www.hbs.edu/case/index.html (accessed July 23, 2004).
Heeks, Dr Richard (2003 ):Most eGovernment-for-Development Projects
Fail: How Can Risks be Reduced?, Manchester, United Kingdom,
Institute for Development Policy and Management (IDPM). iGovernment
Working Paper Series. Paper No.14, available:
http://idpm.man.ac.uk/publications/wp/igov/igov_wp14.pdf (accessed
July 24, 2004).
Heeks, Dr Richard (2004 ): eGovernment as a Career of Context,
Manchester, United Kingdom, Institute for Development Policy and
Management (IDPM). iGovernment Working Paper Series. Paper No.15,
available: http://idpm.man.ac.uk/publications/wp/igov/igov_wp15.pdf
(accessed July 24, 2004).
Heine, Jorge (2004): Reinventing Government: Wholesale Privatisation
is Not the Answer, The Times of India, New Delhi, July 21, Wednesday,
p-18.
Holmes, Douglas (2001): eGov: eBusiness Strategies for Government,
London, Nicholas Brealey. http://www.nbreley-books.com ,
available http://www.ibm.com/ibm/publicaffairs (accessed July 17,
2004)
Kanungo, Shivraj (1999): Making Information Technology Work, New
Delhi, Sage.
Kohli, Amit and Soumya Kaushik (2003): E-Governance: The Road Ahead,
Mumbai, National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE),
available http://www.indiainfoline.com/bisc/egov.html (accessed July
22, 2004).
Lanvin, Bruno (2002): Preface, in CDT (2002) (q.v.)
La Porte, Dr Todd M., Dr Chris C.Demchak, and Dr Christian Friis
(2000): Webbing Governance: Global Trends across National level
Public Agencies, Tuscon, Arizona, University of Arizona and Fairfax,
VA, George Mason University, The Cyberspce Policy Research Group,
Published in Communications of the ACM, January, 2001, available
http://www.cyprg.arizona.edu/publications/acm.rtf (accessed July 28,
2004).
Madon, Shirin (2003): Evaluating the Developmental Impact of E-
governance Initiatives: An Exploratory Framework, London, London
School of Economics and Political Science, April, Working Paper
Series 124, (Work in progress), available
http://is.lse.ac.uk/wp/pdf/WP124.PDF (accessed July 28, 2004)
Misra, D.C. (2004): Defining eGovernment (forthcoming)
Ndou, Valentina (Dardha) (2004): E-Government for Developing
Countries: Opportunities and Challenges,The Electronic Journal of
Information Systems in Developing Countries, 18(1)1-24, July,
available http://www.is.cityu.edu.hk/research/ejisdc/vol18/v18r1.pdf
(accessed July 25, 2005)
Norris, Pippa (2001): Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information
Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide, Cambridge, United Kingdom,
Cambridge University Press
OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) (2000):
Government of the Future, Paris, the Author. Available:
http://www1.oecd.org/publications/e-book/4200081E.PDF (accessed July
18, 2004).
Osborne, David and Ted Gaebler (1992): Reinventing Government: How
the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector, New
Delhi, Prentice Hall of India.
Pai Panandiker, V.A. (ed.) (2000): Problems of Governance in South
Asia, New Delhi, Konark Publishers. Under the auspices of Centre for
Policy Research, New Delhi.
PCIP (Pacific Council on International Policy), The Working Group on
E-Government in the Developing World (2002): Roadmap for E-Government
in the Developing World: 10 Questions E-Government Leaders Should Ask
Themselves, Los Angeles, CA, the Author, sponsored by Oracle and
Microsoft supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York, April,
available: http://www.pacificcouncil.org/pdfs/e-gov.paper.f.pdf
(accessed July 25, 2004).
Thornton, Kenneth R. (1997): Rethinking Government, Washington, D.C.,
International Business Machines Corporation
TNS (Taylor Nelson Sofres) (2003): Government Online: An
International Perspective 2003: A Global Summary, November,
available: http://www.tns-global.com/gostudy2003 (accessed July 19,
2004) (n=31,823 adults interviewed in 32 countries). TNS Consultants:
Victoria Parr and A. Dexter.
West, Darrell M. (2002): Global E-Government, 2002, Providence, Rhode
Island, Brown University, Center for Public Policy, available:
http://www.InsidePolitics.org/egovt02int.html (accessed July 25,
2004).
_____________________________________________________________________
*Dr D.C.Misra,the reviewer, a former civil servant, is New
Delhi€ '¶
based Independent eGov and IT Consultant. He was Chairman, Task Force
for IT Policy for Delhi and also a post-doctoral Visiting Fellow at
Queen Elizabeth House, International Development Centre, University
of Oxford,United Kingdom.E-mail: dc_misra [at]hotmail.com.(5.9.04)
[End].
_____________________________________________________________________
**Bhatnagar, Subhash (2004): E-Government: From Vision to
Implementation: A Practical Guide with Case Studies, New Delhi,
Sage Publications. ISBN: 81-7829-394-3 (India-PB) 202 pp Rs 280.
COMMENTS ARE ALWAYS WELCOME.
FROM MY BOOKSHELF-1:eGov-1: Review of Bhatnagar (2004 Sage) by Dr
D.C.Misra
Version 2: Abridged
Book Review of
Bhatnagar, Subhash (2004): E-Government: From Vision to
Implementation: A Practical Guide with Case Studies, New Delhi,
Sage.202 pp with Bibliography and Index.
This book review is available in this forum under three versions:
Version 1: In A Nutshell
Version 2: Abridged Version
Version 3: Full Version
This post carries Version 2: Abridged.
In case you are interested in eGov, read Version 3 (Full Version)
which is in the nature of a documented review article.
Dr D.C.Misra
September 5, 2004
_____________________________________________________________________
Version 2: Abridged
BOOK REVIEW
by Dr D.C.Misra*
E-GOVERNMENT CALLS FOR FUNDAMENTALTRANSFORMATION:
CASE STUDIES SHOW THE WAY
The book, according to the author, is a result of the two years of
intensive work done at the World Bank in which the field experience
had to be distilled and communicated to the Bank staff through
workshops and training programmes.The book claims to
provide "practical insights for IT professionals, civil servants
and managers from multilateral institutions interested in the
implementation of e-government," and is intended to serve as
"a practical guide for developing e-government at a local, state or
national level."The book is organised in seven chapters.
Chapter 1 deals with definition and scope of e-government. Here the
author gives, what may be called by now the conventional, definition
of e-government and draws distinction between e-government and e-
governance, noting four-stage evolution of e-government, namely, Web
Presence-Limited Interactions-Transactions-Transformation.The
evolutionary stages are also in the ascending order of difficulty.
Examples thus abound in the first stage of web presence
(There are a very few countries now which do not have web presence)
while we have limited examples of fourth stage of transformation).
Chapter 2 focuses on understanding e-government in developing
countries. Here the author enumerates some of the documented case
studies of e-government applications from different developing
countries classifying them in four categories of (i) delivering
citizen services, (ii) delivery of services to business and industry,
(iii) increased efficiency within government, and (iv) empowering
citizens through access to information. He then enumerates seven key
trends of e-government in developing countries.
Chapter 3 deals with potential benefits and impact of e-government.
Here the author enumerates, among other things, the well-known
potential benefits of e-government, namely, increasing transparency,
reducing administrative corruption, improving service delivery,
improving civil service performance, empowerment and improving
government finances, and cites examples to illustrate his claims. He
concludes that "The scope of e-government as it is implemented
today is not wide enough to have generated a macro-level impact that
is discernable through aggregate indicators. In vestments in e-
government are relatively small to have created such a macro
impact."(p-60).
Chapter 4 attempts to provide guidelines, based on a dozen case
studies, for implementing e-government projects successfully. These
guidelines, however, fail to stimulate thinking or inspire action as
e-government projects are not only location-specific but also sector-
specific requiring development of location- or sector-specific
planning and implementation, as the case may be. Moreover these
guidelines, generalised on the basis of mere dozen case studies,
unnecessarily circumscribe the domain of e-government, denying
insights from e-government projects in other locations and sectors.
Chapter 5 makes a more ambitious attempt to provide guidelines for
designing a country-wide strategy for e-government. Here it is
necessary to distinguish between strategy and policy. Governments
seldom, if at all, design a strategy but they do, however, typically
develop policies which usually take into account issues, among
others, of resource constraints and equity. Moreover, governments are
known to be reactive and seldom, if at all, proactive in approaches
to policies and problems. Information technology (IT) has, however,
been an exception to this general rule.
Chapter 6 purports to be a brief essay on future of e-government. It,
however, appears to be inappropriately titled as no where does it
discuss the "future" of e-government, leave alone make any
informed guesses about it. Instead the author deals here with pious
platitudes like "A major task is to build institutional capacity for
reform." (p-93). True, but how? Any example? As a guide perhaps, it
should have shown the way.
Chapter 7, the last chapter, forming nearly half of the book and
which indeed could be said to be the main content of the book,
provides a dozen case studies on e-government "structured in
similar format." The book, according to the author,"is based on the
analysis of two dozen cases from sixteen countries in the developing
world where e-government has been implemented to address social and
economic development challenges." (p-13). The book is wound up by
a brief bibliography, an annotated list of web resources and an
index.
The book revolves round the case studies. The dozen case studies
dealt by the author are: 1. Bhoomi (computerisation of land records
in Karnataka), 2. Gyandoot (community-owned rural Internet kiosks in
Madhya Pradesh), 3. CARD (computer-aided registration of deeds in
Andhra Pradesh), 4. FRIENDS (online payments to the government in
Kerala), 5. VOICE (computerised municipal service centres in
Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh), 6. Income Tax (online income tax
administration), 7. eProcurement (experience from the developing
world), 8. Customs (Indian customs online), 9. Interstate Checkposts
(computerised interstate checkposts in Gujarat), 10. SmartGov
(secretariat (sachivalaya) e-application in Andhra Pradesh, 11. QPEN
(anti-corruption project in Seoul), and 12. CVC (an anti-corruption
project in India).The e-government practitioners in India are quite
familiar with these Indian cases due to their frequent coverage in
print media and on the web and non-Indian cases, being remote, are
only of academic curiosity. The cases offered thus fail to excite the
reader.
The case studies, formally grouped under the title "Case Studies
of Social and Economic Impacts of E-Government," which appear to
have been undertaken by the author on behalf of the World Bank,
follow a structured format of 1. Application Context, 2. New Approach,
3.Implementation Challenges, 4. Benefits and Costs, 5. Potential
Future Benefits, and 6. Key Lessons. The structured format, however,
does not have much value to the readers as the cases,being from
varied fields ranging from computerisation of land records in
Karnataka, India to anti-corruption project in Korea, defy
comparison. It would have been better if case studies pertaining to a
specific topic, say, computerisation of land records, a subject of
considerable importance in agrarian economies, had been highlighted.
Bruno Lanvin (2002) in his preface to The E-Government Handbook for
Developing Countries, has noted: "There is no e-government
textbook and no e-government theory; knowledge comes from practice;
excellence comes from best practices." (CDT 2002). But then one is
reminded of English poet T.S.Eliot's oft-quoted lines: "Where is the
wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost
in information?" The pearls of wisdom in case studies are often
hidden in, following Harvard terminology, the "cold-questions" which
trigger thinking (and thus hopefully prepare practitioners for
action).No "cold questions" are found in the routinised presentation
of case studies in this book under review, designated "structured
format" by the author.
A glaring omission in these case studies is the absence of the
perspective of the concerned citizens. The Roadmap for E-Government
in the Developing World has rightly noted that "Citizens are the
e-government experts." (PCIP 2002). Inclusion of this perspective
would have very considerably enhanced the value of these case studies
to the reader.
E-government calls for fundamental transformation. This book, through
the case studies, shows the way to e-government policy makers and
practitioners. Sage India, which has already earned a well-deserved
reputation for quality publications in social sciences including
publications on information technology (IT), needs to be
congratulated for bringing out this timely publication on e-
government. We hope more books on e-government will follow from this
stable. Reasonably priced and well produced, the book should be read
by all concerned with e-government in the developing countries. The
writer too needs to be congratulated for making a noteworthy
contribution to the limited but steadily growing literature on e-
government in developing countries.
References
CDT (Center for Democracy & Technology) (2002): The E-Government
Handbook for Developing Countries, Washington, D.C., the Author.
November. A project of InfoDev and Center for Democracy & Technology,
available: http://www.cdt.org/egov/handbook/2002-11-
14egovhandbook.pdf (accessed: July 25, 2004).
Lanvin, Bruno (2002): Preface, in CDT (2002) (q.v.)
Misra, D.C. (2004): Defining eGovernment (forthcoming).
PCIP (Pacific Council on International Policy), The Working Group on
E-Government in the Developing World (2002): Roadmap for E-Government
in the Developing World: 10 Questions E-Government Leaders Should Ask
Themselves, Los Angeles, CA, the Author, sponsored by Oracle and
Microsoft supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York, April,
available: http://www.pacificcouncil.org/pdfs/e-gov.paper.f.pdf
accessed July 25, 2004).
______________________________________________________________________
READ
A Review by Dr D.C.MISRA of
GOVERNMENT ONLINE:
Opportunities and Challenges
by
M.P.Gupta, Prabhat Kumar and Jaijit Bhattacharya
(New Delhi, Tata McGraw-Hill, 2004)
in next post under this column.
____________________________________________________________________
* Dr D.C.Misra, a former civil servant, is New Delhi – based
Independent eGovernance and IT Consultant. He was Chairman, Task
Force for IT Policy for Delhi.E-mail: dc_misra[at]hotmail.com.
FROM MY BOOKSHELF–1:eGov-1: Review of Bhatnagar (2004 Sage) by Dr
D.C.Misra
Version1: In A Nutshell)
Book Review of
Bhatnagar, Subhash (2004): E-Government: From Vision to
Implementation: A Practical Guide with Case Studies, New Delhi,
Sage.202 pp with Bibliography and Index.
This book review is available in this forum under three versions:
Version 1: In A Nutshell
Version 2: Abridged Version
Version 3: Full Version
This post carries Version 1: In A Nutshell
______________________________________________________________________
The book claims to provide "practical insights for IT
professionals,civil servants and managers from multilateral
institutions interested in the implementation of e-government,"
and
is intended to serve as "a practical guide for developing e-
government at a local,state or national level." The author, who
has
been a professor of information systems at the Indian Institute of
Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA), currently shuttles between Ahmedabad
(for teaching and research at IIMA) and Washington, D.C. (for leading
an initiative on E-Government at the World Bank).
Reasonably priced and well produced, the book should be read by all
concerned with e-government in the developing countries. The writer
too needs to be congratulated for making a noteworthy contribution to
the limited but steadily growing literature on e-government in
developing countries.
______________________________________________________________________
In case you are interested in eGov, read Version 3 (Full Version)
which is in the nature of a documented review article.
Comments are always welcome.
Dr D.C.Misra
September 5, 2004
Global Quiz Club is organizing the Quiz World Cup 2005. The Quiz
World Cup 2005 contest is open to any person above 8 years of age.
The contest is organized at three levels - I. National Semi-Final,
II. National Final and III. International Final, arranged in
following six different categories of age groups:
1.Group A: 8 and 9 years
2.Group B: 10 and 11 years
3.Group C: 12 and 13 years
4.Group D: 14 and 15 years
5.Group E: 16 and 17 years
6.Group F: 18 and Above
Subjects:
General Knowledge
Sports
Entertainment
Participants from 100 countries will be eligible to participate in
the National Semi-Final On-line Contest, which will be conducted
every month from July 2004 to June 2005. Top 1000 winners from each
of the six age groups from each National Semi-Final contests can
participate in the National Final contest (on-line). The top scorer
of each age group from each participating country can then
participate in the International meet, which will be held in New York
in October/November 2005.
For details, visit the website:
ttp://www.gqcevents.com/qwcintro.htm
Dr D.C.Misra
New Delhi,India
September 5, 2004
The following is the Schedule for International Olympiad in
Informatics (IOI), Athens, Greece (September 11-18, 2004):
• Sep11: Arrival of Contestants, Leaders and Guests
• Sep12: Opening Ceremony/ Problem Selection
• Sep13: First Competition
• Sep14: Activities/Problem Selection
• Sep15: Second Competition
• Sep16: Day-long Excursion
• Sep17: Closing Ceremony/Banquet
• Sep18: Departure of Contestants, Leaders and Guests
For details, visit the official website at
http://www.ioi2004.org/
Dr D.C.Misra
In the Quiz-2004, organised by IMS Learning Resources Private Limited
on August 20, 2004 in association with Hindustan Times
(www.hindustantimes.com) at the FICCI Auditorium, New Delhi 532
teams participated.Read the full news at
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/674_979767,00310004.htm
The news can also be read offline in
Hindustan Times(www.hindustantimes.com),
New Delhi, Wednesday, September 1, 2004, Metro edition
HT Horizons (www.hthorizons.com)supplement,NewsBuzz, p-6.
Dr D.C.Misra
INTERNET IS NOW 35.
Nearly thirty-five years ago computer scientists at University of
California, Los Angeles (UCLA) linked two bulky computers using a 15-
foot gray cable, testing a new way for exchanging data over network.
This ultimately became the Internet.
Stephen Crocker and Vinton Cerf were among the graduate students who
joined UCLA professor Len Kleinrock in an engineering lab on
September 2, 1969, as bits of meaningless test data flowed silently
between the two computers. By January, three other "nodes" joined the
fledgling network.
(Source: Adopted from Jesdanun, Anick (2004): Happy birthday,
Internet, New York, August 30, at http://www.post-
gazette.com/pg/04243/369847.stm ;accessed August 31, 2004). Anick is
an AP Internet Writer.
Dr D.C.MISRA
August 31,2004
CYBERQUIZ –2: THE WORLD WIDE WEB by Dr D.C.Misra
If the Internet is the outward trappings of new technology, the World
Wide Web, simply called the Web, is its soul. And what a soul! Its
revolutionary feature is multi – media convergence. Be it a
newspaper, a radio, a television, a telephone, a book, you name it
and the Web has it, all in one place, the screen of the
computer.While the Web is no longer a novelty, the following
questions may have some surprises. Let us check.
1.(a) What has been called The Rosetta Stone of the Internet, and (b)
What is the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web?
2.What is the difference between WorldWideWeb (one word) and World
Wide Web (three words)?
3.(a) Who invented the World Wide Web and when, and (b) What for was
the World Wide Web originally invented?
4.(a) Which are the alternative names which Tim Berners–Lee, the
father of the World Wide Web, consider for the World Wide Web, and
(b) When did the World Wide Web become public?
5.What are deep Web and surface Web?
6.How does deep Web compare with surface Web and how many deep Web
sites exist at present?
7.(a) What is the size of the World Wide Web, and (b) How much of the
World Wide Web is indexed?
8.(a) How much of the World Wide Web is covered by the search
engines, and (b) The number of devices used to access the World Wide
Web in 1997 was 78 million. What was the expected number by 2002?
9.(a) What is the average duration of page view and time spent during
surfing session by a Web surfer, and (b) How many sessions per month
does a Web surfer undertake and how many Web pages does he view per
month?
10.(a) How much time does a Web surfer spend per month surfing the
Web, and (b) What is the percentage of surfers who would gladly watch
less TV for the World Wide Web given a choice between the two?
11.How many Web sites are visited by most people per World Wide Web
visit?
12.(a) How much time is spent to load the home page of a typical
website and what is threshold believed to represent natural human
reading / scanning speeds, and (b) Who surf more at home – the lower
income surfers or more affluent people?
13.Who are better at adapting to new technology, women or men?
14.What is Web Services Interoperability (WSI) organisation?
15.(a) In ancient days, a pen was made from quill, the hollow shaft
of a feather, but what is e-quill, and (b) What is Emule?
16.VerySign, Inc., a Mountain View, CA-based firm, which operates
much of the Internet, infrastructure, was processing 600 million
domain requests per day in early 2000. How many domain requests is it
processing now?
17.Which was the world's first Web site?
18.What has been hailed as the Woodstock of the World Wide Web?
19.(a) If it has been described as "the longest running vaporware
project in the history of computing" and also as "an amazing epic
tragedy," what is Xanadu, and (b) What is the difference berween
World Wide Web and Xanadu?
20.What are the following in Xanadu terminology: (a) transclusion,
(b) bert, (c) ernie, (d) humbers, and (e)
transcopyright?
ANSWERS TO CYBERQUIZ – 2: The World Wide Web
1. (a) The World Wide Web. (The Rosetta Stone, incidentally, is a
stone discovered in 1799 near Rosetta, Egypt, which provided the key
for deciphering hieroglyphs. It was deciphered by cryptologist Jean
Francois Champollion in 1822. It carried a decree from the reign of
Ptolemy V Epiphanes (204 – 180 BC) in three scripts – Hieroglyphs,
demotic and Greek, and (b) The Internet is a network of computer
networks. Essentially it consists of computers and cables. The World
Wide Web, on the other hand, is the information space created by the
Internet, which consists of documents, sound, video, etc. On the
Internet the connections are through cables, and on the World Wide
Web through hypertext links. The Web could not be without the Net.
2.WorldWideWeb (one word) was the first Web client, a browser-editor
that ran on a Next machine while the World Wide Web (three words) is
one of the important services available on the Internet.
3.Tim Berners – Lee, a graduate of Oxford University, while working
at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, invented the World
Wide Web in 1989. For further details visit his web site
http://www.w3.org/people/Berners-Lee. He is now working in MIT. The
World WideWeb was originally invented for sharing high-energy physics
data at CERN.
4.(a) Mine of Information ("Moi", c'est un peu egoiste), The
Information Mine, and Information Mesh, and (b) 15th January 1991
when the line-mode browser developed at CERN was made available by
the process known as anonymous FTP.(Source: John Naughton 1999).
5.According to a study by NEC, the existing search engines can dig at
the best only 16 per cent of information from the World Wide Web.
This is called surface Web. Bright Planet
(http://www.brightplanet.com/deepcontent/index.asp), a Sioux Falls,
South Dakota-based private company founded in 1999, has come out with
the concept of deep Web which is where most of the information in the
Web lies buried, untapped by traditional search engines.
6.(a) The deep Web is currently 400 to 560 times larger than the
surface Web, (b) The deep Web contains 7,500 terabytes of
information, compared to 19 terabytes of information in the surface
Web, and (c) The deep Web contains nearly 550 billion individual
documents compared to the one billion of the surface Web. An
estimated 100,000 deep Web sites presently exist. A full 95 per cent
of the deep Web is publicly accessible information – not subject to
fees or subscriptions. For details, check the Web site
http://www.completeplanet.com for further information.
7.(a) 800 million pages, and (b) Much of the Web is not indexable.
The study done by Steve Lawrence and C .Lee Giles of NEC Research
Institute published in July 8, 1999 issue of Nature on WWW Search
Engine Coverage reported that, as of February 1999, only 42 per cent
of the Web was indexed by the combined search engines.
8.(a) Search engines at the most cover only 16 per cent of the World
Wide Web, and (b) More than 515 million.
9.(a) 50 seconds at home and 54 seconds at work; 29 minutes 51 second
at home and 31 minutes 20 seconds at work, and (b) 18 at home and 40
at work; 664 at home and 1,387 at work (Source: Nielson / Net Ratings
Inc., May 2000).
10.(a) 9 hours 5 minutes 42 seconds at home; 20 hours 50 minutes 48
seconds at work (Source: Nielsen / Net Ratings Inc.) (May 2000), and
(b) 62 per cent, according to a survey conducted by Greenfield Online
for the game site pogo.com.
11.Just three (Source: Nielson / Net Ratings).
12.(a) In the range of 8 seconds, which is nearly ten times the
threshold believed to represent natural human reading / scanning
speeds (Source: Jupiter Communications,
http://www.cddcenter.com/cdd101.htm), and (b) People with lower
incomes spend more time surfing the Web at home than more affluent
people, according to a study (n =57,000 at-home computer users) by
Nielson / Net Ratings, the Internet audience measurement service. The
reason ascribed for the finding is that the lower–income surfers find
enough services and content to keep them there.(Source : WSJ.com).
13.It is ladies first in new technology! The findings of an annual
study, Embracing the Information Age: A Comparison of Women and Men
Business Owners, commissioned by IBM and conducted by NFWBO indicates
that women are better at adapting to new technology than men. Here
are some of the findings of the study. Business homepages: 23/16,
Frequent e-mail use: 51/40, Net use for research: 22/14, Net use for
opportunities: 9/3, and Technical inputs for growth: 17/10.(The first
figure, in percentage, pertains to women while the second figure,
also in percentage, pertains to men).(Source: Vasisht, Divya (2003):
Technically, it's women on top, The Times of India, New Delhi, July
22, Tuesday, Delhi Times, p-1).
14.It is an organisation formed by Microsoft Corp, IBM and host of
rival technology competitors including Intel Corp, Oracle Corp, SAP
AG, Hewlett – Packard Co, and Fujitsu Business Systems to work on
standards to make it easier for companies share information and do
business over the Web. Sun Microsystems Inc., the inventor of Java,
and a rival of Microsoft is yet to join the organisation (Source:
Seobhan Kennedy, New York, Reuters / The Economic Times, February 8,
2002).
15.(a) It is a Web tool, which enables one to mark up Web pages as if
they were pieces of paper. It is a proprietory item of E-Quill
Corporation but a free version is available for download from the Web
site http://www.e-quill.com, (b) It is a software, a small Java-
based applet, developed by Slangsoft, an Israel's software company,
which can be integrated with any Web-based appliance – e-mail, chat,
etc. – to provide text input in 47 national languages including
Indian scripts like Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, etc. (Source: Prasanjit
Bhattacharya, The Economic Times, September 30, 2000).
16.Nine billion per day. (Thomas L.Friedman, Op-Ed columnist (2003):
Opinion: Is Google God? The New York Times, June 29, Sunday,
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/29/Opinion/29FRIE.html?8hpib).
17.info.cern.ch. This was put online on August 6, 1991. "It provided
an explanation about what the World Wide Web was, how to get your own
browser, how to set up your own server and so on," according to
Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners_Lee#The_ first_website).
18. The world's First International World-Wide Web conference held at
CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory at Geneva, Switzerland
in May, 1994. It was attended by 400 users and developers. (Source:
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/about/achievements/www/history/histor
y.html).
[The Woodstock Music and Art Fair was held on 15-18 August 1969 in 38
acre of Max Yasgur's farm in Bethel in Sullivan county, New York at a
cost of more than $2.4 million drawing more than 450,000 people. The
term "Woodstock" has become "an instant adjective denoting youthful
hedonism and 60's excess." The Fair gets its name from Catskill
Hamlet of Woodstock, which is 60 miles west of the venue of the
festival.For an account of Woodstock, visit
http://www.Woodstock69.com]
19.(a) A global hypertext publishing system conceived by Theodor
(Ted) Holm Nelson (1937- ), the hypertext guru, in 1960. According to
its Web site, "It has unbreakable links, copyright simplification and
softening, origin connection, two-way links, side-side
intercomparison, deep version manageent, and incremental publishing"
(http://xanadu.com/nxu/index.html). It is thus conceptualised as a
universal library of non-sequential writing, which keeps a track of
successive versions and envisages a royalty system for payment to
authors for use of their material. It has been named after the palace
in British poet S.T.Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan (1798) "to represent
magic place of literary memory and freedom, where nothing would be
forgotton." (http://xanadu.com/thehistory.html). Ted Nelson released
the source code of Xanadu in 1999.
Gary Wolf, executive editor of HotWired in his feature The
Curse of Xanadu in WIRED Magazine (June 1995, Issue 3.06) has
described Xanadu as vapourware and epic tragedy as described in the
question (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/Xanadu.html). This
assessment, which appears to be quite fair and objective, has,
however, been hotly contested by Ted Nelson
(http://ted.hyperland.com/whatsay/).
(b) The basic difference between the World Wide Web and Xanadu, both
of which are hypertext systems, is that in the case of the Web,
documents can and are renamed or deleted. In the process, the links
are lost. In Xanadu, on the other hand, documents cannot be deleted
by the users. (Source: Relihan, as quoted on
http://www.zeltser.com/WWW/#Weaknesses_WWW). Also the hypertext
system is quite simple in the Web as compared to Xanadu. Ted Nelson
has said that the World Wide Web is "trivial simplification of his
hypertext ideas."
20.(a) Quoting a document or a part of it in another document by
means of a pointer, that is, without copying it. It is thus virtual
inclusion, which leaves the original untouched. Further, every
quotation will entitle the original author for payment of royalty,
(b) A file in Xanadu system, (c) The unit of information in Xanadu
publishing system for which users would be billed, (d) Humonogous
numbers - arbitrarily large forking-number-system-based number for an
infinite number of unique IDs for labeling stored text, and (e) A
comprehensive solution for rights management in purchases, ownership,
quotation and version management.
(c)D.C.Misra 2004
Desclaimer: While every care has been taken to compile the quiz,
readers are requested to check the authenticity of information before
acting upon it.
It is rightly believed that,unless the information and communication
technologies (ICTs) are made available in local languages, the
ongoing information and communication technology (ICT) revolution
will remain incomplete and its benefits will reach only a small
section of society who have access to the English language. The
scenario is, however, undergoing a fast change.Efforts are being
continuously made, some with remarkable successes, in making
information and communication technologies (ICTs) available in local
languages, often called regional languages, thus taking the benefits
of ICTs to the common man.
Check the quiz at
http://www.i4donline.net/june04/quiz.asp(for questions),
http://www.i4donline.net/july04/answers.asp(for answers).
Enjoy quizzing.
Comments are always welcome.
Dr D.C.Misra
Congratulations and Good Luck,
Kshitij, Harpreet, Rahul and Shreevatsa.
____________________________________________________________________
"Only extra-ordinary people can produce extra-ordinary results
and to create extra-ordinary people, we need to start investing in
them when they are young."
G.Ventakesh,
CTO,
Sasken Communication Technologies
____________________________________________________________________
Kshitij Bansal of Apeejay School, Noida, Harpreet Singh, also of
Apeejay School, Noida, N.S.Rahul of Padma Seshadri Senior Secondary
School, Chennai and Shreevatsa R. of National Pre-University College,
Bangalore have been selected to represent India at the International
Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) in Athens in September 2004, according
to a press note issued by the Central Board of Secondary Education,
New Delhi on July 7, 2004 (http://cbse.nic.in/public.htm).
The Indian National Olympiad in Informatics, 2004 (INOI-2004) was
held on Saturday, May 1, 2004. The Zonal Informatics Olympiad, 2004
(ZIO-2004) was held on Saturday, January 31, 2004. Over 5,600
students participated in it at 34 centres in India and 2 in West
Asia. 204 students qualified for INOI 2004. Out of these 22 students
qualified for the training camp.
The IOI is one of the six Science Olympiads held in annually. The
Indian Association for Research in Computing Science (IARCS)
(http://www.iarcs.org.in) organises it in co-ordination with Central
Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) (http://cbse.nic.in/public.htm ).
The event was supported by Nasscom (http://www.nasscom.org), Sasken
(http://www..sasken.com) and The International School, Bangalore
(http://www.tisb.edu.in).
India won 3 bronze medals at IOI 2003 held at the University of
Wisconsin-Parkside, USA in August 2003. India was represented by
Ishan Behoora, Swamendu Datta, and Indraneel Mukherjee. The leader of
the contingent was Prof. Madhvan Mukund of Chennai Mathematical
Institute, Chennai (http://www.cmi.ac.in).
Let us then wish
Good Luck to
Kshitij, Harpreet, Rahul and Shreevatsa
for the forthcoming
International Olympiad in Informatics(IOI) in
Athens, Greece in September 2004.
Dr D.C.Misra
16th International Olympiad in Informatics
(IOI 2004)
The 16th International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI 2004), the
premier worldwide high school computer programming competition. will
be held in Athens, capital of Greece, for eight days from September
11th to 18th, 2004. This is two weeks after the completion of Olympic
Games in Athens.
The goal of the IOI is " to bring together, challenge, and
give recognition to young students from around the world who are the
most talented in informatics (computer programming), and to foster
friendship among these students from diverse cultures."
A team of 4 students participates from each country. The event
is being organised by Greek Computer Society, a scientific non-profit
association, with the support of the National University of Athens
and Technological Institution of Athens under the auspices of
Ministry of Education of Greece.Started with the initiative of
UNESCO, the first IOI was held in Pravec, Bulgaria in 1989. it takes
place every year in a different country with more than 80 delegations
and around 300 contestants.
For details, visit and bookmark the official Web site
http://www.ioi2004.org/
-- Dr D.C.Misra
Balasubramaniam, Giri Pickbrain (2001): know IT better, Kolkata,
Macmillan.
First Edition 91 pp. Rs 106/- ISBN 0333 935454
Available: http://www.macmillanindia.com/macnewmain.htm (accessed
July 1, 2004).
This is an excellent book, a gold mine for information technology
(IT) quiz lovers. Claimed to be India's first IT quiz book, and
India-oriented, it consists of 500 carefully designed questions, each
a gem by itself. It has been compiled by Giri Balasubramaniam,
popularly known as Pickbrain, a Bangalore-based young quiz enthusiast
who has already carved out a name for himself in IT quiz field by
hosting a number of quiz shows in India. The blurb very rightly
states that `Its novelty lies in that it covers the entire gamut of
IT,its various aspects, its history and applications without
cluttering the readers' mind with jargon." Though the book is
targeted,according to the author, to the urban and rural children, it
can be very profitably read by adults too. Very reasonably priced
(Which book,leave alone a quiz book, can you get in about $2?) and
printed on good quality paper, it is a "must buy" for any IT quiz
lover.The author, who no doubt has taken great pains in compiling it,
needs to be congratulated for making his nuggets available to IT quiz
lovers.I had purchased this book when it made its first appearance in
2001 and I find it equally entertaining, three years after, in 2004!
This goes to the credit of its compiler. Thank you Mr Pickbrain.
CYBER QUIZ: I4D Quiz-5: ICT for Poor
has been published offline in
i4d, Volume II Number 5, May 2004,p-18
(Only questions now; you have to see June issue for answers),
Dr D.C.Misra
CYBER QUIZ BLOG!
Good Morning!
Welcome to Cyber Quiz.
A BLOG on CYBER QUIZ has been set up at BLOG SPOT on
Monday, May 31, 2004.
Check the Web site:
http://cyberquiz.blogspot.com/
-Dr D.C.Misra
"The CYBER QUIZ - 1 is quite a revelation, and am sure would be
well received on and off line."
-- Soundara Rajan N.S.,Mysore
Columnist,Deccan Herald, Bangalore
May 29, 2004
I have started regularly contributing a Cyber Quiz Column in I4D, a monthly magazine devoted to information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) published from NOIDA.So far my following 4 quizzes have appeared in it:
1. i4d Quiz – 1 : ICT and Women: The Princess of parallelogram shows the way, 1(3)21&40, September-October 2003, 2. i4d Quiz – 2 : eGovernance: States: e-Governance initiatives in Indian states,1(4)35&39, November- December 2003, 3. i4d Quiz – 3 : ICT and Health: A Quiz, 2(3)18 & 40, March 2004,and 4. i4d Quiz – 4 : Wireless Communication : A Quiz, 2(4)18, April 2004.
The following 4 quizzes are due to appear:
5.i4d Quiz – 5 : ICT For the Poor: A Quiz,May 2004 (in press), 6.i4d Quiz – 6 : ICT and Local Language Content: A Quiz,June 2004 (Due for publication), 7.i4d Quiz – 7 : ICT and Water / Agriculture: A Quiz, July 2004, (Due for publication), and 8.i4d Quiz – 8 : Community Radio: A Quiz, August 2004 (Due for publication).References are for the printed version).
IMPORTANT: The Cyber Quiz attached with this email is copyright of the author.Reproduction in full or in part in any manner is prohibited. If, however, you wish to use the material contained here, just email your request to him and in all likelihood it will be immediately given so long as its use is for non-commercial purposes, for example, using it in a quiz competition for students.
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