Dr. Anupam Saraph has taken charge as the CIO of Pune, the first of its kind role in India, as claimed by the city administration.
His earlier experience is quite balanced and versatile spanning across as advisor to heads of states, businesses and NGOs, besides being a vice-chairman of a PSU and chairman of several government and business commissions, governance task forces etc.
He also has in his kitty a brief stint in research and consulting roles in the US, Asia and Europe.
Pratima Harigunani of CyberMedia News talks to him about his plans and ambitions in this fresh role and how he aims to use information, web 2.0, repositories, CRPs and collaboration to the optimum degree in managing a city's affairs.
What are the immediate goalposts that you have set as you don the CIO hat?
Benchmarking with the best practices worldwide, learning from success stories and leveraging them, and working on a gap analysis are some immediate priorities. We have a comprehensive documentation shared between vendors and concerned departments regarding all the information projects that are underway.
It would be a basis of gap analysis for the information that is lacking besides using it for co-coordinated growth. This would be used to design an integrated information system, which would, among other things, be part of a long-range integration effort.
I am looking at setting a CRP (City Resource Planning) that will be step ahead from ERPs and will involve many entities like RTOs, municipal bodies etc to come collectively on a web 2.0 platform.
With new plans and deployments on the anvil, what would be the fate of legacy systems already in use?
All systems serve a useful purpose but nothing in life is frozen or perfect. Everything continuously evolves.
The main job now is to make these systems talk to each other and collaborate. First, I have to produce documentation of different systems in PMC (Pune Municipal Corporation) and then identify focus areas.
While there are a couple of vendors delivering already, no one has the complete picture. The questions we need to ask now is can these existing deployments work together, do they need to be re-written or re-designed
If you were to comment on the basis of your various stints in India, and particularly in government set-ups, so far, how much force do policies exert on the use of technology?
My job and role is about information and not technology or policy. I have survived governments in Goa.
It has not been about political agendas but creating win-win scenarios. Even political leaders realize the value of development or social work or industry progress. But the bottom line is information and collaboration as I see it.
States like Kerala and Tamil Nadu are embracing open source on a big scale. Would Pune follow suit?
Why just some states, in fact, the whole world is doing that.
More than that, a lot of changes are seen with the influx of web 2.0 specially, a major shift has been visible even as Oracle suites are becoming web 2.0 compliant.
Companies are shedding off the product-based psychology. Everything is constantly in beta and changing on an on-going basis. Product-oriented approach has become a thing of the past.
As customers are participating in the delivery of services, I want to try services and web2.0 systems with citizens involved in it. Be it enterprise or public systems, open source and web 2.0 will take over in a big way with the central theme of collaboration.
Every vendor will take it into account and every CIO will leverage it.
How do you intend to tackle the information islands that previous IT deployments have led to?
The islands have already implemented IT; what we need to do now is to bridge them so that they can talk to each other.
This would be initially done with platforms for dialogue and eventually with a central repository system which I tried in Goa too. This ensures that every urban centre has a repository for connecting all authorities for all assets.
What lessons have you brought in from your experiences at handling IT in Goa and other states?
Unfortunately in Goa, the central repository did not endure.
Changes have to be implemented gradually so that they endure and a longer window for change is very important.
IT areas cannot be implemented overnight. In the US, I have seen the way web 2.0 is being used and how people have transformed the scenario on communities and collaboration.
How different is being a Corporate CIO than handling a civic system?
Working for a public or government system requires looking at the needs of a big community and making these needs met in the process of achieving the appropriate government missions.
For a corporate, the CIO helps in meeting business missions and accomplishes the same with information.
So what is easier?
In case of a public system, there are diverse stakeholders and varied angles with multiple perspectives, which have to be taken into account for the big picture.
At a corporate level, the task is a little simpler as it is aligned to a common business entity.