Unique Identity Project in India: A Divine Dream or a Miscalculated Heroism?

The Unique Identity Project in India is a flagship project as being highlighted by the Government of India and is being portrayed as a panacea for all ills that exist in the country. Although time can only tell about the efficiency and efficacy of the project, but the very launch of this exercise has made it the largest biometric based identity disbursing e-government project in the globe. This paper, tries to put the current UID project of India into a perspective to evaluate the set of issues and concerns, as pointed by various stakeholders and try to understand the degree of criticality of those arguments. In this light, the areas of concerns around the UID project in India are also being pointed out. Given the largest IT project in nay government globally, the topic is of immense significance besides being timely and the discussion can provide impetus to a series of research activities in the areas of public policy, Information Systems planning and execution as well as appreciating the risks that get associated with such large initiatives.

An Efficient Algorithm for Frequent Pattern Mining for Real-Time Business Intelligence Analytics in Dense Datasets

Finding frequent patterns from databases has been the most time consuming process in data mining tasks, like association rule mining. Frequent pattern mining in real-time is of increasing thrust in many business applications such as e-commerce, recommender systems, and supply-chain management and group decision support systems, to name a few. A plethora of efficient algorithms have been proposed till date, among which, vertical mining algorithms have been found to be very effective, usually outperforming the horizontal ones. However, with dense datasets, the performances of these algorithms significantly degrade. Moreover, these algorithms are not suited to respond to the real-time need. In this paper, we describe BDFS(b)-diff-sets, an algorithm to perform real-time frequent pattern mining using diff-sets and limited computing resources. Empirical evaluations show that our algorithm can make a fair estimation of the probable frequent patterns and reaches some of the longest frequent patterns much faster than the existing algorithms.

A Meta Analysis on Adoption of Mobile Financial Services

During the last decade, there has been tremendous growth in mobile penetration in many countries across the globe including a number of developing countries. The total number of mobile subscription 5 billion by the end of 2010 and is further expected to grow multi-folds. On the other hand, around 2.5 billion adults worldwide do not have a savings or credit account with either a regulated bank or alternative financial institution (such as a microfinance institution). Around one billion people in emerging markets have a mobile phone but no access to banking services. This scenario has opened immense opportunities for organizations including banks, insurance companies and telecom operators to strengthen their customer base and increase revenue by providing various financial services to the consumers through mobile technology. Hence, it becomes very important to understand the factors that would act as drivers or inhibitors towards the adoption of mobile financial services (MFS). Quite a few studies have been conducted across the globe to determine the factors affecting adoption of MFS. This paper provides a Meta analysis of the existing academic literature on MFS and determines the strength of the factors and their linkages through a scoring model based on the type of publication. The findings of the study would be beneficial for further research in understanding the dimensions to be considered for developing adoption model for MFS. The findings can also be used by the practitioners involved in MFS in understanding the factors affecting demand for such services.

Adoption of Mobile Financial Services among Rural Under-Banked

During the last decade, there has been tremendous growth in mobile penetration in many countries across the globe and most interestingly in a number of developing countries. On the other hand around, half of the world’s population is deprived of banking and financial services. This paper is based on a study that was aimed to identify drivers and inhibitors for adoption of MFS among the rural under-banked population and to compare the same with that of the existing studies. During the study, an extensive review of literature was conducted to identify the factors that were studied and found significantly affecting the adoption of mobile financial services. This was followed by an exploratory qualitative research conducted among the rural under-banked population of three distinct states in India. The findings of the study indicate that the demand for banking and financial services and the amount of hardships faced in availing these services through the existing channels of delivery can act as strong drivers for MFS adoption among the rural under-banked. On the other hand, factors like lack of trust on technology and lack of technology readiness were found to act as barriers to the adoption of MFS.

A study on the Current Role of SME’s in the Indian IT Industry and Hypotheses on an Ecosystem for their Sustenance and Evolution

This paper looks at the current challenges faced by the SME’s in the Indian IT industry and formulates hypotheses on how an intermediary can create an ecosystem to ensure the sustenance and evolution of these firms. The play out in the industry is expected to such that the larger companies in the Indian IT sector will move up the value chain and as they do so they will increasingly move out of the body shopping mode that constitutes the lower end of the outsourcing spectrum. This creates an opportunity and a necessity for the emerging companies and SME’s to fill the void.

Feasibility and Sustainability Model for Identity Management

National Identity projects and providing such identification to citizens in various countries around the globe has captured attention of late. Although the perceived benefits are numerous, nonetheless the challenges and bottlenecks for a successful rollout are many. The objective of this paper is to put forward the drivers and inhibitors for adopting a common identity management system across various organizations and to suggest a model for determining the feasibility and sustainability of such a system. The paper develops on TAM for proposing a model for identifying the drivers and inhibitors of managing such an identity management exercise. This paper highlights various factors affecting successful implementation of an identity management system and investigates the impact of these factors. The model suggested in this paper would allow organizations and policy makers to determine the critical factors for the implementation of an identity management system in large scale.

Status of Common Service Center Program in India: Issues, Challenges and Emerging Practices for Rollout

The Common Service Centre is a 1.2 billion USD initiative by the Government of India. It is an integral pillar of the Government’s National e-governance Plan. The project was started in the year 2004 with the vision to develop these centres as the front-end delivery points for government, private and social sector services to rural citizens of India in an integrated manner. However as on 31st May, 2010, six years after the initiation of the project, only about 50 percent of the States had reported success in achieving 70 percent rollout status of these centres. Even the successful States were being plagued by issues which were hindering the operation and threatening the sustainability of these centres. In this paper we have discussed the current status of implementation of the CSCs across the nation and the pertinent issues that are being faced by the various stakeholders in the project. It was interesting to find out that though the country wise rollout had not yet reached the cent percent mark there were some states that were doing well, compared to others, despite the fact that some of these failing states were the first to initiate the exercise.We have also conducted field studies in the states of Jharkhand,Uttar Pradesh and Meghalaya in order to understand the ground level issues and challenges hampering the implementation of these centres. This paper is an attempt to understand the various challenges and bottlenecks that are being faced in making these common service centres sustainable. Given that the CSCs are designed to provide the last mile linkage to G2C and B2C services, the importance and impact of these centres are immense and the program has the potential to overturn the issues related to accessibility that pulls back the sizeable percentage of the populace. It is however, noteworthy that these perceived benefits to the citizens from this project can only be accrued when these centres are operational. Thus it becomes imperative to study the factors that are hindering the setting up and the functioning of these centres. The study also reveals that there was lack of fool-proof planning at the government’s end in terms of having no structured framework for roll out and no risk mitigation plan in place for a project of this dimension. Moreover, the study shows that there has been a substantial evolution in the business model (based on PPP) that was being used initially across various states in the country to a business model (based on PPP) that is emerging to be more successful and sustainable than what was initially planned for.

Feasibility Study of Setting up Information Technology-Enabled Services (ITES) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Hubs in the North Eastern States of India: A Report

This report aims at identifying the various state administrative/commercial capital cities in the North East Region where IT-enabled service industry could be set up, and whether the necessary conditions conducive to the industry exist. It is also an attempt to rank the various cities in terms of their investment friendliness when it comes to the ITES industry. This report involves a macro environmental analysis where the focus is mainly on the STEEP sector of the business environment – social, technological, economic, environmental and political aspects that impact competitiveness.

Research and action agenda for a national broadband initiative in India

Broadband has found to have substantial impact on the economic growth of various nations. Recognizing the positive impact of broadband, several countries have gone ahead with their respective broadband plans, which, at times, include requisite fiscal stimulus. In this paper we have tried to look into several of these international examples and have tried to put forth the challenges and opportunities that exist in a fast developing country like India. Based on these experiences, observations and analysis, this paper tries to bring forth recommendations towards a National Broadband Policy for India and suggests the objectives and structure of the same - thus setting a research and policy agenda for the nation. The findings of this paper may also provide necessary inputs to policy makers of such developing nations to formulate a similar broadband policy and management organization for them. --