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Dr L P Sharma

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Dr L P Sharma

Technical Director

NIC

Dr L P Sharma is a member of:

Dr L P Sharma's Advice

Have vision and implement it

I think they are my vision and a strong desire to implement them that gives me happiness to spend even extra time, coupled with detail domain knowledge in the area of my work and the understanding of the capabilities and limits of Information and Communication Technology tools.

Essential qualities needed to became successfull

: First of all, to become a successful technocrat you need to be no doubt very intelligent, some part of which might be there in your genes and rest you have to develop through your hard work. Your intelligence will give you confidence and you can learn any new technology. HR management skills become very important as you become senior. In short all nine areas of project management, knowledge of technology and ability to understand the problem domain coupled with characteristics of a good human being are all the essential qualities a person should possess to be successful as a technocrat.

Concept of Analyst

I have become an Analyst with lots of efforts and experience. But I have met many young guys and girls trying to become analyst. There is so much of difference between intuitive and tacit knowledge. I believe an analyst need to have lots of intuitive knowledge. An analyst is a real chain breaker and a bridge between the legacy methods and practice to the emerging trends and the technologies. Whether it is implementing E-governance practice or any technology enabled citizen centric services or process re-engineering it is the analyst who can do it with confidence. I am happy that there is no dearth of such analyst in India, we only need to wait till these analyst become leaders and come to the fore front to work directly for the citizens.

Avoiding mistake and connecting right dots

My intuition is the primary source of knowledge for any decision to be taken. In the area where my intuition fails I develop my decisive knowledge by investigating through multiple experts. In the beginning phase of life many decisions must have gone in the negative directions resulting to wastage of time and some resources but still giving good lessons. Such lessons have now accumulate to help me to connect the right dots.

Important decision taken

When my uncle was in USA and I received the forms and preparatory notes for both GRE and TOFEL, I just did not take initiatives. Later when I received job offers from many MNCs, I just could not take them seriously. I think these were the decisions because of which I am presently serving my own state winning applauds from many well wishers and at the same time getting some times off my work to share ups and downs of life among my own friends and relatives.

Qualities require to be successful

My Strongest Skill

My achievements

: I attended a government school and a government engineering college, never went to any private school, never paid tuition fees. I joined an esteemed organization like NIC and have been working for 19 years very honestly. Maintaining a high level work profile with many exemplary works, I am able to complete my Ph.D. also probably first from entire north-east region from my organization that too in the field of technology. I have my publications in high impact factor journals and have participated and presented in world level conferences including the United Nation’s Conferences in places like Bangkok, Singapore, USA and Canada. I have won some E-governance awards and best technical paper awards as well. During my nineteen years of service I got four promotions and from the age of 39, I am in the rank of a Director. Despite receiving many good job offers from outside I have been sticking to the present job to serve my own state. These are all the professional achievements that I have but with the passage of time I have grown highly spiritual as well and don’t really feel proud off all these but just thank god for bestowing me wisdom for all these achievements.

Initiative taken by professionals to develop a country

Professionals can form NGOs, contribute money from their earnings and work for poverty elevation and children’s education. IT professionals can make good software and implement in government that can bring ease and transparencies in data sharing, through which government workers are bound to utilize the available resources optimally and the resources meant for the poor people are received by them in time. At the same time some other professionals can produce goods and services that can be sold in developed countries and bring in foreign exchange. Above all sincerity, honesty and ethics counts the most. If all the professionals have all these three important virtues we can easily make India a developed country.

Couple of years from now

I might be one of the few professionals of my age and experience in India to have hands on software development as well as GIS development. Talk about land cadastral to disaster management to any serious data bases development, citizen centric web services in any important sector, I have vision and ready requirement for both development as well as implementation. I may take any drastic decision in future towards any direction if I see some meaningful way there to implement these visions directly for the benefit of common people. My motto will be not to rise up myself but to contribute something remarkable to the society.

My advice to professionals

Be organized, practical, honest, spiritual and to make service as the first motto.

My thought on education system in India

Our education system has enough stuffs and ambiance for the hard workers. But at the school level the system is rather generic without any fixed plan for a particular child. That results to more than average child becoming jack of many talents and master of none while below average children are dropped out of schools. If any child comes out to be a master it is either his own plan or grooming, or his or her parents, but not of the system.
To improve the system, I feel exercise may be initiated to identify every child’s potential and interest right at kindergarten and to complete it when he or she is in 4th to 6th standard. Once their interests are identified, focused coaching should be given only on that subject. Children at this age have so much of energy, and if this energy could be captured and utilized in a focused manner to give them practice on one of their subject of interest we can make every child a master in his or her own field where he/she is never bothered about the career, living or earning, but is always busy in contributing to the society through his knowledge and expertise, while his or her living requirements are met automatically.

Upcoming trends

I started work with a PC that had no hard disk way back in 1992. I used to have my DOS OS in a 5.6 inch flopy disk to boot the system. After booting the system I used to insert another flopy with my Lotus, Wordstar and Dbase. Later I worked with PC-XT, PC-AT, PC-286, PC-386 and PC-486. I used to most of the times wait for the whole day for the processing/compiling of one report using the data from a database. When I got a Pentium machine first it had 40 MB internal hard disk and 256 KB RAM. I was able to process data in ten minutes that earlier took complete day with 386 and 486 machines. Now a pocket hard disk has 500 GB storage and a mini data centre has 100 terabyte of storage. I started software development for storage and compilation of data using a dbase or a foxplus software but now we have .NET and java with advanced tools like AJAX, SOAP, WSDL, MVC supported by a plethora of IDE integrated for services oriented systems. The change in technology with improvement in terms of speed and accuracy is a very positive sign from the career perspective. It ensures job opportunities to many by tapping resources that is being wasted and not by creating liabilities or by limiting others opportunities.

Current Job Description

I am presently working as Technical Director of National Informatics Center in Sikkim and Program Director for National Land Record Modernization Program (NLRMP) under Land Revenue and Disaster Management Department, Government of Sikkim. Under NLRMP the scope of work is to completely modernize the information and the business process related to land record management in the state. With my background and expertise in Information and Geo-information coupled with domain knowledge of land record system in the state, I am now designing and implementing systems that meets the goals of the NLRMP. Cadastral maps have been digitized, geo-referenced and mosaiced both as rasters and vectors. Each land parcels in vector forms are linked to their corresponding records in the land record databases. We are now in the process of integration of land mutation and registration process. Once completed the citizens will apply for registration through the single window system and at the end of process walk away with sell deed, ROR and map in one go. That will be followed by hosting a series of web as well as sms services for land owners and their buyers. Another process is to introduce modern methods of surveying through Electronic Total Station, Differential GPS and Digital Meters that can save time and increase efficiency and accuracy. This demands a series of capacity buildings at various levels, over hauling and re engineering of the existing process. I conceive, design and lead this process for implementation.

Influenced by

I have been mostly influenced by Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam for his sincerity, dedication, motivational power and positive thinking.