The Hindu Business Line : ICT-isation can help make government processes SMART

USING the core competence that India has in ICT (information and communication technology), it is highly possible to bring transparency to administration through e-commerce and e-business, opines the President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, in one of the papers included in The State, IT and Development.

The book, edited by R.K. Bagga, Kenneth Keniston and Rohit Raj Mathur, and published by Sage (www.indiasage.com) brings together thoughts on how policy initiatives, investments, R&D and incentives aim at opening "windows of opportunity to large segments of Indians who find themselves left out of the digital loop".

ICT is no substitute for good governance; it can at best be an enabler, remind the editors in the opening chapter. Cutting-edge services to consumers demand backend databases that have complete and standardised entries, they point out. A serious hurdle that is not to be lost sight of is the resistance from middlemen whose livelihood depends on "the relative inaccessibility of government documents".

In a chapter titled `Governance: virtual to real', Jayaprakash Narayan cites the example of Norway for its `impeccable information four centuries ago on land ownership and holding status, births and deaths,' and so on. To argue that all information should be made available at one single point, he notes how in Germany passport applications are submitted to the local municipal office. E.A.S. Sarma looks at `ICT and good governance' and rues the absence of `periodic evaluation by independent agencies' of the Government's many computerisation schemes. "A close involvement of the beneficiaries at the time of design of the scheme and during the implementation would enhance its credibility and effectiveness," he suggests.

The phrase `bahujan sukhaya, bahujan hitaya' (meaning, greatest good for the largest number of people) captures the characteristics of good governance, say Sameer Sachdeva and Rohit Raj Mathur. "Virtually every objective of good governance receives a value addition by ICT-isation of government processes to look SMART - that is, simple, moral, accountable, responsive and transparent," aver the authors.

Shyamal Ghosh studies the options to bridge the digital divide, and draws inspiration from the line, "Better learning will not come from finding better ways for the teacher to instruct, but from giving the learner better opportunities to construct." Kamal Kant Jaswal is positive that rural empowerment through ICT can revolutionise society, while T.H. Chowdary demands the edging out of retired civil servants and former practitioners of monopoly from policy and regulatory bodies at the earliest!

On `cyber law and its implementation', Pavan Duggal is of the view that we are on a learning phase now; he seeks modifications in provisions relating to data protection, privacy and electronic payments. ICT can bring corrupt acts of individuals to the notice of society at large and can thus cause great impact, believes N. Vittal. Andhra Pradesh's CARD (short for Computer-aided Administration of the Registration Department) is the case study that Paven Malhotra discusses in a chapter on `technology and the politics of corruption'.

V. Prithviraj, S. Gopinathan and K.P. Sunil Kumar write on OPDI or `Organisation Process Documentation and Integration'. R.K. Bagga's message for digitising governments is simple: `Improve internally to serve well online'. The section on ICT initiatives has articles by M. Phani Kumar on eSeva, Sanjay Jaju on Saukaryam, and Aruna Sundararajan on the Kerala experience. In the last section, on `the road ahead', V. Balaji emphasises on `agricultural extension'; V.V. Rajasekhar talks about `ICT-enabled partnerships in rural India'; Satyan Mishra and Amit Gurung look at `social capital and financial returns'; and J. Satyanarayana writes about `e-government'.

Valuable read for those who consider that IT too has to chip in towards development.

340 trillion trillion trillion addresses

CISCO (www.ciscopress.com) has brought out the second edition of volume 1 of Routing TCP/IP, to provide `a detailed examination of interior routing protocols'.

One of the changes in the new edition is semantic, point out the authors Jeff Doyle and Jennifer Carroll. The earlier edition used `network' to refer to data link, and `internetwork' to mean `a set of networks connected by routers'. Although that terminology is certainly accurate, it is clumsy, and `internetwork' is seldom used these days, points out the introduction.Thus, network refers to "everything from a local link to worldwide autonomous systems operated by the likes of Level 3, NTT, and Sprint."

When Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn invented TCP/IP for the Internet, "a 32-bit address space, yielding almost 4.3 billion addresses, seemed inexhaustible," given the fact that the Net was then "the exclusive realm of academics and researchers".

But as the kids who worked with these networks in colleges went out into the real world, they took with them an appreciation of the possibilities for what could be done with a peer-to-peer network built on open standards, narrate Jeff and Jennifer. As address exhaustion problem was recognised in the 1990s, the proposed solution was a new version of IP, `known in the development stage as IP Next Generation or IPng', and now called IPv6. For the short-term, though, the solution was NAT or Network Address Translation, which allows "multiple hosts to share one or a few public IP addresses", and thus slows IPv4 address depletion.

Despite widespread use of NAT and its success, there is currently serious interest in migrating from IPv4 to IPv6.

The authors attribute this to `two fundamental drivers'. One, "widespread vision of new application using core concepts such as mobile IP, service quality guarantees, end-to-end security, grid computing, and peer-to-peer networking", in all of which `NAT stifles innovation'. And two, "the rapid modernisation of heavily populated countries such as India and China."

Here is `a compelling statistic' from the authors: "the number of remaining unallocated IPv4 addresses is almost the same as the population of China: about 1.3 billion." What about India? "4- and 5-layer NAT hierarchies exist just to support the present demands for IP addresses."

What does IPv6 offer? Instead of the 32-bit address, it has a 128-bit address.

How many addresses will be available? "340 trillion trillion trillion," answers the book, and plugs in the following footnote: "Given what was unforeseen when IPv4's 4.3 billion addresses were thought to be limitless for all practical purposes, the almost inconceivably vast IPv6 address space will never be considered inexhaustible."

True to the promise on the back cover, the book is essential reference not only for its entertaining style but also for the `wealth of information' it contains.

Tailpiece

"Whenever I send a spin to the boss, my mail bounces!"

"Try pace, instead."

Books2Byte@TheHindu.co.in

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