Hasseraghatta and Kuteeram - A weekend near Bangalore

There was a birthday to celebrate, and we had the weekend  to ourselves. Thanks to a very benevolent sister we had bookings at the Kuteeram at Hasseraghatta. We had heard positive reviews about it before, but largely about the Nityagram dance village opposite which it is located. 

Hasseraghatta is a small village / township approximately 18-20 kms to the outskirts of Bangalore, approximately an hour's drive from the city center. The area was originally known for a large man-made reservoir, which used to have a prominent yatch club, but now the reservoir is completely dry. Nityagram is a dance-village and school established by the famous Odissi Dancer Protima Gauri in the early 1990's, and boasts of a famous dancing ensemble and celebrity visitors.

The drive to the location is quite a maze, but we had an easier time due to the mapmyindia navigator device with us. The Taj Kuteeram is an offbeat hotel with 15-20 rooms modeled after the vintage houses of Karnataka. The rooms are spacious and well-maintained, but in a rustic village setting with gardens and trees all around. The hotel's restaurant is  centrally located overseeing a fountain and a small stream of water, with ducks bounding about. The food is pretty good, but the downside is that one has to chose from a preset menu. Besides that, there are a few games that one can play, learn pottery and see a magic show or two. 

The Kuteeram is a great getaway from town, particularly on a weekend, and if one wants to do nothing but relax and enjoy the peace. We loved it because of the quiet and calm of the location, after a stressful week at work. But more activity-seeking individuals, and in particular kids may not find it as much fun. Yet, it is a great weekend getaway to consider from Bangalore, and is often available at a value price.

SimplyDoc

Over the last couple of weeks, we have been hacking around with healthcare data in India. It is quite surprising to see the poor quality of data that we in India have about our healthcare system.

There is hardly any validated, current information about the distribution of doctors and healthcare facilities in different locations. Even the Medical Council of India, the only centralized body which collates data about health facilities in India, is supposedly one-quarter inaccurate. I believe that this is an understatement, since I doubt if the database (which has over 9L entries starting from the 1960s) has ever been thoroughly validated.

So in order to improve the quality and currency of information, we have started geocoding available information from multiple sources on the presence of healthcare facilities in the country, and validating it to the extent possible.

We've hashed together a quick piece of code to put out what we have currently and the result is SimplyDoc (http://www.simplyDoc.in) - a simple platform that provides information about the closest healthcare facilities to you (using the browser's geoip to determine your location), or for any location that you specify.

Currently the data coverage is largely restricted to Bangalore and Mumbai, and our confidence on the accuracy of information uploaded is about 75%. We will continue to clean, validate and upload as much of the healthcare data as we can into the system and improve the quality of the system over time.

If any of you out there have any feedback or comments, or would like to validate any of the information available, please feel free to drop us a note - here or at vasant[at]simplydoc.in or tweet to us at @SimplyDoc

National Cyber security policy

A draft of the much needed National Cyber Security Policy has finally been released by the Ministry of IT / CERT-In, for public comments.

Link: India cyber security policy draft

Interesting points:

• Creation of a national level nodal agency on cyber security under CERT-in and sectoral CERT-ins for key sectors
• A national cyber alert system for early warning and response
• Local incident response teams at key locations, to liaison with expert teams with CERT-in for resolution
• Creation of a Chief Info-security Officer post in all government and key sectoral organizations
• Open standards to be encouraged and a govt-private sector consortium to be created to promote these
• School/college training program on cyber security to be instituted

My view: Great start. Good coverage in areas at least. A much needed start too - IT and offshoring-focused industries should be pleased. This is something that goes against India in a lot of global sourcing evaluations.

A few things missing too: Privacy has just a single passing mention. But any cyber security policy that requires public and corporate participation must address privacy over use of shared / collected data. Check out the US policy review. But then, privacy and civil liberties have rarely been a key element in Indian law. 

A second lacuna is that it doesn't prioritize initiatives. The policy indicates over 10 major initiatives without any priorities or timelines. With so many different stakeholders involved in policy implementation, it is quite easy for the policy to remain largely in text. But then, this is common of most Indian policy. Again, this is an early draft, so hope things change.

Overall, a timely and much needed start.

Just in case, public comments can be sent to CENT-In/MIT at (grai AT mit.gov.in) till 15-May '11.

The Electronic Service Delivery Bill

The Indian Ministry of IT has put out a draft Electronic Service Delivery Bill 2011 for comments to general public. The intended Bill seeks to accelerate the process of electronic delivery of services to public by government departments by prescribing a time-bound transition from manual to electronic services, and creating an associated regulatory infrastructure.

My comments, based on an initial read.

It is an appreciable start, meant to galvanize state departments into action. While some states such as AP, Karnataka and Delhi have taken sizeable steps in e-Governance, the rest are largely laggards. If nothing else, this bill should make governments sit up and move a bit.

I specifically liked the wording around the use of service providers for delivery of services and collection of associated charges. If implemented properly, this will result in a new era of PPP opportunities for IT service providers in e-Governance. 

Yet, the bill gives too much leeway to individual ministries on the extent and time-frame of implementation. One good alternative would have been to prescribe a minimum set of services that each ministry must e-enable. In the current form, it would become the headache of the regulatory Commissioner to push ministries to expand scope.

Another open point is the open implementation timeline. Despite prescribing a 180-day limit for governments to decide on the scope, it makes the cut-off date for implementation, discretionary. Knowing the legendary delays in implementation of e-governance projects, this is a quagmire.

In sum, a great start. May run into financial impediments unless the associated investment burden of states is appropriately addressed (not everything can be a PPP with limited investment); and political bottlenecks could be envisaged since it seems to exert quite a bit of central influence on state functioning.