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IBM introduces new software platform for governments
By Kukil Bora
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Thursday, 20 May 2010, 18:33 IST
Bangalore: With the purpose to address the challenges that governments, whether central, state and local, are facing today, IBM has introduced new technical innovations for governments. IBM's Governmental Industry Framework (GIF) is a software platform, which will provide extensive solutions to governments in areas like public safety, crime prevention, law enforcement among others.
Speaking on the occasion, Ponani Gopalakrishnan, Vice President, IBM India Software Labs, mentioned that to stimulate economy and benefit citizens, governments are more inclined towards adding intelligence into their services. According to him, to build a smarter city, the government has to work smarter. "A smart city is characterized by dynamic infrastructure, better ways of working, better products and services to the end-users, assured public safety and more importantly, by an accessible government," said Gopalakrishnan.
Talking about 'Smart city command center', one of the GIF enabled solutions, and how it is being implemented in India, Gopalakrishnan mentioned SAHANA, an open source disaster management system deployed by national and state governments. SAHANA, developed in 2001, proved to be very helpful during the Bihar floods in 2008. He also talked about how Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) is using this technology to track all of its 500,000 LPG cylinders with IBM's radio frequency identification-based solution.
On the pricing of these solutions, Gopalakrishnan said that they are not being priced based on their complexities, instead it's the value of a particular solution, which will determine its price. According to him, now governments are much open towards this kind of technology services, as they work towards citizen centered activities to ensure welfare and security of the citizens. He added that the public sector is third largest source of revenue for IBM.
On implementing this technology for India's Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), Gopalakrishnan told that IBM offers integrated infrastructure solutions to CBDT's three data centres in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai. It also offers facilities management services for the Income Tax Department (ITD) across 745 offices in 510 cities in India.
In a country like India, where the population is increasing day by day and more people are migrating towards urban areas from rural areas, these technology-driven capabilities can be very handy for the government to work smarter.