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Hindu: In the largest such simultaneous deployment of ‘free-and-open’ software in India, over 15 lakh Kerala schoolchildren on Friday start taking their quarterly practical tests in Information Technology on personal computers using a special Linux version.
The IT@School project of the State Education Department has developed an operating system based on the Linux version Ubuntu. Called IT@School GNU Linux Version 3.0, it was distributed to 2,832 high schools — over a thousand of them government schools, the rest aided and unaided ones.
Between September 7 and 22, children of Classes 8, 9 and 10 will use some 30,000 PCs to do their quarterly practical examinations in IT.
The State’s path-breaking e-learning initiative Akshaya had raised popular expectations, but the cost of proprietary software licences in bulk was unaffordable. This led to the State emerging as a pioneer in the use of Open Source resources in a host of education and e-governance projects

The seventh annual survey conducted by Darrell M. West, director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University, and a team of researchers evaluates online government Web sites of countries around the globe. The researchers evaluated government Web sites based on two dozen criteria, including disability access, the existence of publications and databases, the presence of privacy policies, security policies, contact information, and the number of online services.
This year’s study reviews 1,687 government Web sites in 198 countries during June and July 2007. A variety of different sites were analyzed, including executive, legislative and judicial offices as well as departments and ministries of the government such as health, education, foreign affairs, interior, finance, natural resources, foreign investment, transportation, military, tourism and telecommunication.

Some highlights:
South Korea Continues to Lead World in Global e-Government
Turkey moves up from rank 27 in 2006 to9
Portugal moves up from rank 48 in 2006 to rank 7
India moves up from rank 77 in 2006 to 47

Get the complete Global E-Government Report, 2007 [pdf]

With a view to provide specialized health services to patients in rural areas, a two way telemedicine link between Sir Ganga Ram Hospital here and Community Health Centres at Haryana and Rajasthan was established today.
Launching the pilot project ‘Village Resource Centre´ (VRC), a link between the hospital and CHCs in Gohana, Haryana and Kaithun, Rajasthan, Union Minister for Science and Technology Kapil Sibal said the Ministry is planning to start 15 other VRCs in different parts of northern India soon.
“The project aims at providing quality healthcare, early diagnosis, treatment and tertiary consultation from SGRH to medical kiosks established in village hospitals,” Sibal said.
The VRCs will also provide services like rural medical insurance, farming advise, weather updates, water management, employment generation through vocational courses and educational facilities.
[Via]

The Madurai Division of Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) will phase out the use of paper slowly with the introduction of Enterprising Data Management System (EDMS), which would pave way for keeping records in electronic form, and facilitate LIC transactions by a policy holder from anywhere in the country. The Madurai division will serve as a pilot scheme in the south zone, and the second division in the country.
Between 1-14 August, LIC sold 73,432 policies, mopping Rs82 crore as premium.
[Via]

The fishermen of Veerampattinam will soon have a mobile phone enabled intelligence system that will tell them everything from where to fish to when to venture home because the weather could turn ugly. M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) is working on on a solution to provide real time information on mobile phones using CDMA. The features:
1. Weather updates to help the fishermen decide whether or not to venture out
2. Information on fish concentration to increase catch
3. A GPS capability is also being worked out, which would make rescue operations easier.
The pilot project involving 10 fishermen is running on the Tata Teleservices Ltd , whose coverage extends to a range of 15-20 km off the coast, covers about 80% of the fishermen’s requirement. “It is currently in Phase 0—we hope to move through four phases over a period of one and a half years. By November this year, we would like to perfect the application, and make about 100 phones available across the coast,” says Parag Kar, senior director of Qualcomm in India and SAARC.
The cost of the handset is estimated at less than Rs 2,500, and would be subsidized by Qualcomm and MSSRF.
[Via]

During the late 1990s, an oft-repeated story about India’s mobile revolution featured fishermen in Kerala who used their mobile phones to call wholesale agents before reaching the shore to check market prices. Considering that mobile calls used to cost 20 cents a minute in those days and were obviously limited to the affluent, the story appeared apocryphal to some.
There is now a research that has mapped the benefits to those fishermen. The study, by Robert Jensen, a Harvard University economist, found that as mobile coverage increased in Kerala, fishermen’s incomes increased by 8%, fish prices fell by 4% on average and less wastage was created. It concluded that information makes markets work, and markets improve welfare.
It is this welfare function that the mobile phone revolution seems to be spreading across India, especially in rural areas. Mobile phones are making conventional economic transactions more cost- and time-efficient. They often make up for poor infrastructure by substituting for travel. They allow price data to be distributed and enable traders to engage with wider markets.
As India adds more than seven million subscribers every month, there is a distinct impact on the grass-roots economic landscape. Mobiles have played the role of a growth multiplier. From the roadside motor mechanic to the mason, the vegetable vendor or the illiterate housemaid, everyone is getting linked to his or her relevant marketplace. The farmer in the countryside can now base his harvesting decision on the regional commodity market rates he receives via text message, or plan his sowing in line with the weather forecast. Read on …

LiveMint: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), India’s biggest phone services firm, will piggyback a state-of-the-art wireless broadband network that it’s setting up for a large computer kiosk network for the Union government to offer up to 85,000 customers high-speed wireless broadband services.
A draft tender circulated by the state-owned BSNL among hardware vendors details a range of voice and value-added services to be offered. “The class of service features shall support…real-time and extended real-time voice and video traffic for voice over IP, fax, video conferencing and video on demand applications,” says the draft tender, indicating the type of services for which it plans to use the network.
The service will use the emerging Wimax (worldwide interoperability for microwave access), which is capable of data speeds of 10 megabits per second (mbps). In comparison, third generation (3G, a fast mobile phone standard) networks promise data throughput of 2mbps and data-friendly cellular networks deliver speeds of up to 512 kilobits per second.
The centres, to be run on the public call office model by village-based “entrepreneurs”, are being designed to provide government services such as issue of certificates, registration of births and deaths, along with commercial information. Read on …

LiveMint: Goa is set to become the first state in India to be fully connected through a high-bandwidth broadband network.
By March, the network will be rolled out together by the state government and Bangalore-based tech solutions company United Telecom Ltd in a so-called public-private partnership model.
Optic fibre cables and wireless technologies will be used across the state and will also link some 200 computer kiosks that deliver government services to the state’s residents.
United Telecom is also providing connectivity for 450 common service centres in Jharkhand. Read on …

Hindustan Times: The government is now ready to bring in a regulation for television through Internet and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV).
A joint group comprising officials from the Information and Broadcasting and the Telecom ministries has been constituted to draft a regulatory framework for IPTV and Internet television. “The group is due to submit its report soon,” an official said.
The joint group will also examine the issue of content. “For IPTV and mobile television, only the channels approved by the ministry can be allowed. But it would be difficult to enforce the same in case of internet television,” the official said.
The government is considering the law under which the new broadcast modes can be regulated as well as how it should be done. “The current broadcasting law does not cover IPTV, internet television or mobile television because the mode of transmission is not traditional–meaning, satellite or terrestrial,” a senior I&B ministry official said. For the ministry, the issue is that if the new broadcast modes are considered cable services, the definition of broadcasting service and cable operators will need to change, an official said.
Ministry officials believe that by the time the new technologies are ready to be implemented on a big scale, the regulatory framework will also be ready. So far, MTNL and the Bharati Group have announced IPTV services on a pilot basis in South Delhi. Prasar Bharati has started mobile television services for six channels in New Delhi area. Read on …

The Kerala IT Mission and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing or CDAC has launched a web portal, the first of its kind in the country, to check cyber crimes.
Users can log on to www.cyberkeralam.in and register themselves. They will be given a password using which they can share their grievances with experts at C-DAC.
Users can expect immediate tips but if the problem requires a detailed investigation it will be referred to the high tech cell of the Kerala police. Read on …