Web Services & Localisation: A Way forward to Realise Digital Inclusion and Development in Rural India *

Transcription

1 Web Services & Localisation: A Way forward to Realise Digital Inclusion and Development in Rural India * Madaswamy Moni Deputy Director General National Informatics Centre Government of India [email protected] 1 Digital Economy An Economic Transformation, Now Intensifying Most of rural India is yet to accept the idea of an inclusive India, and presents a baffling dichotomy of images: poverty and growing potential of rural markets, where over 70 % of the Indian population lives. Rural India desires to take advantage of knowledge-intensive techniques for sustainability of its stakeholders: farm and non-farm linkages, through grassroots level information access (contents) and grassroots level access to information (networking). India is also a highly multilingual country with more than 20 officially recognized languages and hundreds of dialects in use, and only 5% of the Indian populace speaking the English language. Breaking the language barrier is like providing an essential infrastructure for good governance, peace & prosperity at grassroots level. Rural connectivity is strength, wealth, and progress and hence to face the SWOT in respect of: Reaching the unreached : Public Services From digital divide to digital opportunities for sustainable development and economic growth Fostering agricultural growth, poverty reduction and sustainable resources use Sustainable development & earth care policies - water, energy, education, health, agriculture & rural development, biodiversity A Cluster of villages - sustainable societies in viable rural space This has led to a growth of supply capacity through capital-augmenting technological change, which in turn, changed the capital and labour markets, and has generated greatest demand in: Web Services Development, User Interface Design, Business Domain Expertise, Security Expertise, Mobile Application Development, and Ubiquitous Computing. Indian IT & ITES industries have tremendous potential to become an engine of growth and productivity improvement, through localisation, for all sectors of the economy. Data may need to be abstracted from more than 200 different document formats (HTML, PDF, Word, PPT, etc) encountered on the Web. An economic transformation - digital economy - is now intensifying and leading to a rapid economic growth in India [1]. 2 ICT Diffusion for Development with a Rural Focus The Indian government has initiated several Digital Initiatives: Digital Networks for Farmers (DNF), as a follow up of ISDA95 [2] recommendations, to ensure digital inclusion for fostering rural prosperity and reducing spatial disparities in India. Rural India should be given a chance through Digital Networks for Farmers (DNF), DISNIC Programme, e-cooperatives, and digital SMEs. [2], [3], [4] and [5] dealt with the Digital Initiatives, so as to help bridge theory and reality at grassroots : e-cooperatives & CoopNet : an Internet enterprise development programme for fostering agricultural and rural industries; AGMARKNET : A network connecting about 2500 Agricultural Produces Wholesale Markets to transmit daily market prices of more than 300 commodities and 2000 varieties facilitating a DATAWAREHOUSE for rural empowerment to achieve Supply Chain; with a road map to cover 7000 and rural markets ( * Published in the forthcoming issue of CSI Communications (India), March

2 Digital SME : ICT Diffusion for Small and Micro Enterprises (SMEs) growth and development, for reduction of spatial disparities, and enhancing opportunities to penetrate into export markets; DISNIC programme : ICT for micro level planning at grassroots level An Informatics Blueprint for a Village ( Agricultural Resources Information System (AgRIS): to improve agricultural productivity in rural areas, and a much needed domestic strategy for sustainable rural livelihoods ( e-granthalaya: Moving Towards Rural Digital Library for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods; 3 Suggested Action Plan: ICT Diffusion for development An ICT-triggered rural knowledge revolution can help to break the barriers that stand between localised rural economies and the globalised market. Using ICT, an area in which India has expertise, rural India can be accorded its place in the World Economy, while still maintaining its predominantly agrarian economy. This will facilitate Rural India to shine, smile and roar. The suggested Action plan is as follows:- Development of Proof-of-Concept Projects in pilot districts (as per the typology identified) : Agricultural Resources Information System (AgRIS); AGMARKNET led market extension system; Digital SMEs covering Urban Clusters and Rural Clusters; E-Cooperative and COOPNET of Agricultural & Rural Credit Societies; ICT for Micro level Planning : DISNIC Programme; Rural Digital Public Library : to serve as the backbone for literacy mission and poverty alleviation ; Rural Empowerment and Development through e-learning (READ): Community Information & Communication Centres and Digital Libraries (DL) Centres READ Centres through Broadband Connectivity in about Rural Colleges, which produce about 9 Million students in the age group of Years annually; Establishment of AgRIS Centres in 300 Agricultural Colleges (215 under SAU System, 85 under CAU and General Universities), 89 ICAR Institutions, and 35 State/Central Agricultural Universities; Networking of Departments of Geography, Departments/ Faculties of Agricultural Marketing, Schools of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Schools of Social Sciences, Centres for Regional Development Studies, and Agricultural Colleges. Adoption of Quality Management System (QMS); Intranet for Collaborative Research, Extension and Training; Portals in officially recognised Indian Languages Localisation ; Adoption of Portal Models: Broadcasting / Wider-Dissemination Model Critical Flow Model Comparative Analysis Model E-Advocacy/ Lobbying and Pressure Group Model Integrated Services Model Documentation of Geometry of Information Flow; Capacity Building of all Stakeholders involved in the Collaborative Research & Development Models. egovernance Standards for delivery of services : Architecture & Technology standards, Networking & Information security, Metadata & Data standards for Application domains, Localisation and Language Technology Standards, and QMS & Documentation Control ( 2

3 To achieve this, Web Service as a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) ( has emerged and has to be exploited through localisation for achieving rural prosperity. SOA is an attribute and architectural approach than a project in and of itself. 4 Web Services: A faster route to reach target users bypassing technology brokers and technology consultants This ICT for Development with a Rural Focus is a much needed domestic strategy for sustainable livelihoods in Rural India. "Things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler" (Albert Einstein). It seems that reaching the right level of simplicity is more like a dream than reality [6]. This requires reuse of functionality of existing systems (software agents) rather than building them from scratch. SERVICE IS GOVERNMENT S ONLY BUSINESS. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) should be its architecture, according to Paul W. Taylor ( Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) [6] provides the foundation and Web Services provide the building blocks for Application Architecture to achieve seamless business processing. A SOA-based framework is capable of providing support for multiple XML standards at the same time, such as ISO XML [8]. Web Services based on industry standard protocols, offer the potential of eliminating the need for proprietary hardware, software, and network protocols, and facilitate organisations to lower their investment costs greatly in terms of increased ROI [9] [11]. Straight Through Processing (STP) [12] has the same significance to the financial industry as Supply Chain Management (SCM) has to the manufacturing industry and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has to the service industry. The key technologies and specifications that will enable the orchestration of internal and external STP related business processes as Web Services include: Web Services Flow Language (WSFL), Business Process Modeling Language (BPML), XLANG and FpML, FIX protocol, and ISO XML. P2P (Peer-to-Peer) Computing through Web services technologies (in conjunction with XML standards for each vertical industry, such as RosettaNet and ebxml) represents the next revolution in the computing age, as it will alter dramatically the way businesses communicate, collaborate, and exchange data over the Internet [13]. Web Services standardization provides the means for P2P architecture to be broadly adopted for EAI [14] and B2Bi [15]. The market for B2Bi is huge and is expected to yield productivity gains. XML (extensible Markup Language) standards bodies such as BizTalk, cxml, and RosettaNet are working to develop the syntax for XML that will streamline and enable B2B Commerce, using a standards-based approach, which will align SCM on a global basis. Value Chain Markup Language (VCML) is a comprehensive set of XML-based, industry-specific vocabularies [17] (words and meanings) and documents required to conduct business over the Internet, allowing for the integration of Supply Chain (SC) and Demand Chain (DC) resulting in true Value Chain Collaboration over Internet. VCML vocabularies are currently based on industry-specific implementations of ANSI X12 and EDIFACT EDI. Adoption of VCML is a sound interim step, in moving from standards such as EDI towards emerging B2B standards such as ebxml (e-business XML) [16]. Application frameworks are a holistic set of guidelines and specifications that provide platforms, tools, and programming environments for addressing the design, integration, performance, security, and reliability of distributed and multi-tiered applications. Both the J2EE framework and the Microsoft.NET framework hold the promise of being the predominant Web Services framework in the industry, with the clear road map of research & development. Technologies that were traditionally traded mainly through technology brokers and business consultants, now find easier and faster routes to target users through Web-based Technology Transfer Portals (WTTP): Broadcasting / Wider-Dissemination Model Critical Flow Model Comparative Analysis Model E-Advocacy/ Lobbying and Pressure Group Model Integrated Services Model 3

4 5 The World Is Flat : But Miles To Go Before. The world is flat (Thomas Friedman), in view of Any Where, Any Time experience through Web Services. In India, the language barrier is to be broken, so as to make Web Services through Localisation as an essential infrastructure for good governance, peace & prosperity. To achieve this, it is required to make Information Processing in Indian languages (IPIL) as a compulsory section in Computer Science Curriculum, from the graduate level onwards (B.Sc, M.Sc, MCA, B.Tech, M.Tech in Computer Sciences, Information Technology, Computer Applications, e-commerce, etc) [18]. IPIL Mission should facilitate and concentrate on Research, Education, Training and Extension with respect to: Speech Synthesis and Recognition technologies; Machine Aided Translation; Multilingual Corpora and content creation; Optical Character Recognition; Digital Library. This will usher in desired outcome in ROI towards People, Process and Knowledge, which will eventually a stepping stone for achieving Knowledge Economy & Society in India. It has brought the country international recognition as an IT Superpower. But the country has lagged behind in the domestic deployment of IT, and is now being boosted through National e-governance Programme (NeGP). A 1% investment in IT is correlated to 3.5% increase in GDP [19]. The Indian IT is no more an infant and should be projected as a responsible part of the Supply-Chain. Though Japan has taken the lead in IPv6 [20], India is getting into the act with the industry developing products compatible to the new version. 6 References [1] Digital Economy Information (0s & 1s) Management and Movement [2] ISDA95 : National Conference on Informatics for Sustainable Agricultural Development, 1995, organised by National Informatics Centre, Planning Commission, Government of India. [3] Moni, M (2005): ICT for sustainable rural livelihoods, Mainstreaming ICT, March-April, [4] Moni, M (2004) : Agricultural Resources Information System (AgRIS): An e-government Programme for fostering agricultural growth, poverty reduction and sustainable resource use in India, Presented at the Regional Workshop on Implementing e-government, 31 May 4 June 2004, UN Conference centre, Bangkok (Thailand), organised by Asian Development Bank Institute (Japan) and UN/ESCAP, Bangkok. [5] Moni, M (2005b) : e-granthalaya: Moving Towards Rural Digital Library for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods, Invited Talk at Regional Workshop on Managing Sustainable e-community Centres, organised by ADB Institute (Tokyo) and Colombo Plan Staff College for Technical Education (CPSC), 4-10 May 2005, Agra (India). [6] Hao He (2003): What Is Service-Oriented Architecture in September 30, 2003; [7] Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an architectural style wherein loose coupling among the interacting software agents is achieved through extensible schema and a small set of simple & ubiquitous interfaces. The idea of SOA departs significantly from that of Object Oriented Programming (OOP), which strongly suggests binding of data and its processing together. Scalability is to be achieved through Stateless Service, reliable and efficiency through Stateful Service, and overall service reliability through Idempotent Request in SOA. [8] ISO XML is a result of the convergence of the most important messaging protocols in the financial vertical industry FIX ( FpML ( and SWIFT. ( It is kind of a superset covering the domains of these existing messaging protocols, which provide the core layer that describes business process semantics for STP. [9] Return on Investment (ROI) is a key financial metric of the value of business investments and expenditures. It is a ratio of net benefits over costs expressed as a percentage. This formula can be expressed as: [10] ROI = [(Monetary Benefits (Tangible and Intangible) - Cost of using Web Services Technology) / Cost of using Web Services Technology] x 100 4

5 [11] Gunjan Samtani and Dimple Sadhwani (2002): Return on Investment (ROI) for Web Services published in [12] Straight Through Processing (STP), is a solution that automates the end-to-end processing of transactions for all financial instruments from initiation to resolution, is set to revolutionize the financial industry. STP will streamline back office activities, leading to reduced failures, lower risks, and significantly lower costs per transaction. It encompasses a set of applications, business processes, and standards that will redefine the settlement and processing paradigm within the capital markets industry.. STP encompasses both enterprise application integration (EAI) and business-to-business application integration (B2Bi). [13] Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing based architecture allows for decentralized application design, moving from centralized server models to a distributed model where each peer, independent of software and hardware platforms, can benefit and profit from being connected to millions of other peers. In such architectures, clients and servers have a lateral relationship rather than the traditional vertical relationship, giving the whole peer group tremendous processing power and storage space. [14] EAI is the process of creating an integrated infrastructure for linking disparate systems, applications, and data sources within the corporate enterprise.. [15] B2Bi is the process of secured coordination of information among businesses and their information systems, enabling cross-enterprise business applications such as collaborative e-commerce, collaborative networks, supply chain management (SCM), and customer relationship management (CRM) across multiple channels of delivery including wireless devices and the Internet [16] Ref: [17] A vocabulary is a collection of business terms and their associated meanings as they relate to their use in business. Each industry, as well as each company within an industry, has a vocabulary in which they conduct business. [18] Thomas Friedman : The World is Flat: A brief History of the 21 st century, New York Times. [19] Ravi Venkatesan (2004): IT s a Paradox: India Lags in Domestic Deployment, The Economic Times, 1 December [20] IPv6 offers 128-bit IP addresses (i.e. 80 octillion addresses 80 * ). 5