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Taming The Numbers Beast

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DQI Bureau
New Update

A billion

is a nice round figure. But many find its derivatives staggering.

Mumbai is "larger" than Australia. A million PCs a year, but

just one for 300 users. A million cellphones, yet 99% of Indians

haven't ever seen one. So what would a database of all Indians

be like? Very big indeed. The list of registered voters in

India adds up to 600 million. That's the size of the database

put together by India's Election Commission. If you thought

anything can fit on a CD, well, this database takes 96 of

them. It would occupy 20 DVDs. This isn't quite Singapore,

but the world's largest democracy is a natural for widespread

infotech use, with a citizens' database and a network at the

core. The missing link in government stems from what I call

infoisolation. Each department struggles with its own databases.

The Income Tax Office, with its "PAN" numbers years overdue,

grapples with lists of foreign travelers.

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The census

exercise creates its own billion-record filing cabinets that

are years out of date. DoT's phone companies recreate their

own databases, with no interaction with the ITO except a "database

mailing" of tax notices to phone-owners. Now imagine a country-wide

"highway", with a fast network and a citizens' database at

the core. Government departments build on this data. The ITO

generates tax notices and follow-ups to the big power and

telecom consumers. State electricity boards integrate it with

GIS systems to streamline distribution, and match revenues

with air-conditioner ownership data. Municipal officials plan

water supply from the population distribution data; and transport

departments, their bus routing. This isn't far-fetched, because

our governments-whatever the party-are very interested in

infotech today. A Newsweek cover describes India's new economy:

"Forget the elections, it's high-tech that really matters".

It's not just the $4 bn of software exports or the IT companies

that hog a sixth of the BSE's market-cap; IT really works.

From

banks and public utilities to elections. And today it's okay

to endorse it. In fact, as impressive as the database the

EC's wide area IP network: 1,500 centers, a mix of leased

lines, VSATs, dial-up RAS and modem arrays, across 32 states

and UTs, with a GIS system and a webserver in Delhi. Not for

the sake of the web site or to help surfers, but to commit

the results to a public forum, for transparency and to avoid

post-counting manipulation. It's a huge exercise, but thanks

to infotech, it works. Planned, purposeful infotech can help

tame those terrifying numbers. Just a thought: if this can

work, enterprise IS should be a piece of cake...

Prasanto

Kumar Roy

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