Collaborative approach can step up the pace of Digital India initiatives

BANGALORE, INDIA: On the sidelines of CMR-DELL Government Connect Deliberation Forum, we did a quick chat with Raman Bountra, Business Leader(Public) of Dell India to understand how challenging is it to lay the ground work for the new government's ambitious 'Digital India' vision and '100 Smart Cities' project; and as a technology transformation partner, how optimistic is Dell about the emerging opportunities available in the government business space.

What roles can technology providers play in materializing the government's 'Digital India' vision? 

The initiatives government is taking in the form Digital India will go a long way in establishing government to citizen services in terms of improved governance and providing the last mile services. That is a very robust plan. We, at Dell are excited and eager to participate to participate along with the government to provide our technology and services to enable those initiatives. We are participating in various technology transformation projects taken up by the government to achieve these objective. It could be either be in the form of taking part in competitive tender process or a collaborative approach with our system integrator, go together and present a solution to the requirements of various projects of the government.

Infrastructure availability and the solution provider's ability to stitch disparate solutions together are the two important elements to ensure a smooth run of these projects. The various components of the solutions are often available easily, but we need to put them together with right kind of partnerships to fulfill the requirement of the projects. Therefore, it has to be a collaborative approach among the SIs, OEMs, software providers to see how a complete solution can be put together that works seamlessly.

What about the Dell's play in the big picture? How do you align your partnerships?

We would like to be a major player in all the projects in the government space and gain a fair share of the business. We have worked in various government projects such as Crime and Criminal Tracking Networks and Systems(CCTNS), home, IGRS, e-Panchayat, e-District, etc. which have been rolled out successfully across different parts of the country already. We interact with the government from time to time and work with the government bodies closely in terms of providing inputs and consultation on what we think will be beneficial from policy and project implementation point of views.

We have the required infrastructure with us and will also continue to partner with like minded system integrators(SI) to provide an end to end offering. You just can't have a standalone infrastructure working on its own; you need the right kind of partnerships in place to make that work. At the end of the day one can't afford to have a solution with different pieces in it that are working in silos. We have the technology and right partnerships to formalize and put together an end to end solution today.

Dell has spent about 18bn dollars in acquiring technology and IP for various different services. We had more than 30 acquisitions and partnership also in place over the last four years which not only make our offering strong, but also make the entire spectrum of solution accessible to us.

We have got to a place, where we have the entire plethora of solutions, such as an end to end infrastructure piece along with software solutions such as back up, security, managed services, etc. Now we have to see what application can rest on our infrastructure depending on how the architecture of the solutions is and how do we package and present as an answer toward the requirement. That's how partnership work and makes a solution seamless.

India is still struggling to find the right nuts and bolts to set up its very own 'Smart City'. What are the challenges?

Smart city solutions are very complex by nature and given a vast and diverse country like India, the implementation is also a challenging task. For example, while a certain piece of solution can work for Delhi, it might not work the same way for Bangalore or some other cities. The success of such initiative depends completely on how we define the problem, set the different parameters and execute the solution .

Siloed thinking does not help also. A collaborative approach can drive the things a lot faster than we can imagine. You can't entirely depend on the government to achieve this vision and you can't entire depend on the private partners likewise. It has to be a collaborative approach and public-private partnership to come to the level.

I feel, the whole concept of smart city and Digital India is interwoven and both the concept need to coexist. The whole concept is brilliant and it has to be implemented step by step. Expectations on smart cities are very high at this moment. But we can't make the cities smart overnight. It will take time. As long as necessary procedures are followed and implemented, we will surely get there after a certain time period.

Getting a passport used to be a tough issue five years back. We had to wait for a long period. But I can get my passport in three days now. That is a huge benefit to the citizen. I can pay my electricity bill online. I don't need to go and stand in a long queue for that. I can do my banking online today, which was not possible seven years back.

Besides central government, the respective state governments have also shown a lot of initiatives in this regard. The challenging part of the task is to make the benefits visible to the citizens and make their lives simpler, easier, faster and more productive.

We see a huge gap between plan and execution. As a technology provider and implementation partner, what do you think that the government can do to bring down this gap between expectation and implementation?

The government operates in a very heterogeneous kind of environment and infrastructure. But if we look at the purchase and procedures, they have clearly defined the standard operating process on purchases. What they do in terms of evaluation, technical qualification are as per books. They are time bound, are defined by budget and a lot of other factors also. It is really complex process and not as simple as it looks. But an increase in the speed of implementation would definitely help in achieving the 'Digital India' and 'smart city' mission faster. The more  tangible it becomes, the more nearer we get to the goal.