 It has been a key member in the National Committee for Enterprise Architecture in India and a co-author of the Indian Enterprise Architecture Framework, better known to many of you as INDA. So a really important standard that is transforming the way that things are done in the Indian government as from an enterprise architecture point of view and delighted that our own standard Tegaf plays such an important role in that. So today Palab is going to look at the Digital India Initiative and what it's doing to transform India. So a virtual round of applause for my colleague Dr. Palab Sahar over to you Palab. Thank you Steve. Good, good, good day all of you, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. I'm happy to be doing this presentation. In fact, this is very nicely timed because the content that was covered by me and some of the, you know, some of the ideas and some of the concepts that were already covered provides me a very good quote unquote platform to kind of move into my presentation, which focuses more on Digital India. I think from, you know, for those of you who are joining from India, you have definitely heard of this big program, which started in 2014, so to speak, which I would, you know, term as the first generation of Digital India. And you know, I have made a couple of presentations already in our conferences over the past three years on this topic. So I will not cover, you know, that material already because those that have been recorded and they are available. So what do you see to be a continuation of what is in progress program that is currently unfolding in India as we speak. So last year in 2019 towards 2019, there was a, you know, let's say, you know, saying that we need to move to the level of transformation in India and therefore it was, you know, unofficially as the India version 2.0. I'm going to show you some of the, you know, the material and some of the work that is going on. And please understand, as I've mentioned earlier, is work in progress. So certain things I will mention are going on. So even as we see things are progressing. Let me move on to the slides. You heard, you know, you've already heard Remy and some of the questions that Steve came through with his presentation. So some of these terms are being captured here. So this is the transformation framework that kind of summarizes everything that is important. You know, Steve, you asked one very important question that is the role of enterprise architecture in digital transformation. So in this, you know, picture, you can see the key layers and the key elements and the key, you know, segments that, you know, really form the digital transformation framework that is being currently followed in, within the digital India initiative. Right on the top, it starts with the various delivery partners and please understand that because this is pertaining to digital links, there's a lot of involvement from the open side, which is quite obvious. However, there is a lot of key take-holds which are coming in from the citizen and the consumer side, that is people who consume the digital services, the providers of those digital services. And there is an understanding that all the providers don't have to be a government ministry or a department, we are on a PPP basis in partnership with these. And I think we all understand that today, given the crisis we are facing, of course, we have the government, we have the aggregators, the platform providers and the investors are also involved in that. Having said that, the second layer is the most important part of the digital transformation because one thing that we are always thinking about is what digital services mean to the people, what does it mean to the different stakeholders that have been identified on the layer on top. So some of these terms have already been discussed before. So this is the speed of a digital service that we have defined services that are personalized, that meet the requirement of the citizens and the stakeholders, certain services that are paperless. I think we all understand that and we all need that today. Presence-less you don't have to see a human being to get the service end to end proactive. Why do you have to wait for the government to provide a service? Why does to request for a service? Why doesn't the government actually proactively say, this is the kind of service that we believe citizens need and therefore we provide that service. Perceptive and pervasive is important to use of other digital technologies like AI, like mobile technologies to provide services in a more inclusive manner. One thing that is very important from a government perspective is inclusiveness. If you provide all citizens don't have the same level of literacy, if you will. Now it is important therefore it's important that even a person in the area is able to consume a digital service who is not be on a smartphone for instance. So this is something that a corporate entity will unlikely face because there the consumers or customers are a lot more homogeneous. Then you have the architecture. I think I will cover that a little later, there are a couple of slides there. But what I'd like to highlight here in the architecture layer are the six domains or the eight domains that we cover in terms of the architecture starting all the way from performance to integration to governance. So that's the architecture planning layer and then the bottom three pillars talk about the different implementation layers that are required to execute that architecture. Number one is it's very important to have good institutions and good governance and all of the success factors of institution and governance. Number two is definitely when you provide services we need to know citizens are asking for and therefore it's important to provide citizen insights. And third is we need back and delivery capabilities. And this is where the couple of questions that came up earlier in terms of how do we combine architecture with practices is something that we have we have dealt with and I'm going to cover that in a little slide later. In a nutshell, various building blocks, if you will, of the transformation that digital India is currently rolling out, even as we speak. And having said that, you can obviously understand and appreciate that the enterprise architecture or architecture plays a very important role in this journey. So my intent here is not to go into the details of the frame. As I said, I have made a detailed presentation in London about the India Enterprise Architecture Framework and that session has been recorded. So you could always go to our channel, open group channel on YouTube and have a look at that. But in a nutshell, this framework consists of three parts. So the number one is the framework itself, which focuses on the eight reference models and the eight domains are the same ones that I've shown in the previous slide. Second is the guide. And third is, as you can see, this is where the marriage of the practices with architecture rigor comes in and with the latest update, which is called the Agile India Framework. So I'm not going to go into details, but I, you know, this is a basic understanding of what is currently in from an architecture perspective. But what is more important is that in the digital India, digital transformation journey that is currently underway, we have a set on the United Nations Development Goals because this is for us and for any country because this is defined, you know, basically defines the goals and objectives that digitalization, so to speak, should be should be targeting. So because these goals are already available and they are best, because we thought let us not reinvent the wheel and let us try to, you know, build our architecture in alignment to the UN SDG. OK, so these are the UN SDG as such has got 17 goals and more than 160 targets and indicators. So it is a very, very detailed framework that is available in the United Nations if you follow from the government domain perspective, you should be familiar with this. Having said, what you see here are the 17 goals. They look very independent of each other. Actually, they are not independent. So this takes me to the next slide, which shows that these goals. So this is a snapshot of the same goals, but it shows the relationship in the different goals. So, for instance, if people are, you know, if people are in poverty, for instance, I cannot provide education and so you can see there are many goals which are actually connected to one another. So this is a snapshot of the of the SDGs in a connected manner, unlike in the previous slide, which is basically the boxes, which kind of, you know, were placed there in a different manner. And you see the numbers there, 17 goals, 169 targets and 241 indicators. And the reason I'm showing this slide is because it's the basis for integration. When you talk of an end-to-end business process, when you talk of data integration, when you talk application integration, or any other kind of technical integration, it is the SDG which provides the basis and the rationale for that integration. It provides the answer to the question, why do we need to integrate? Whether it is API based integration or whether it's the integration based on some kind of a service, but in a particular detail. But when you talk to the lawmakers and the strategy level bureaucrats, you have to tell them that, you know, if you cannot address a goal without addressing other interconnected goals, and that's the very essence of digital transformation that is currently going on. So this is what I was talking about. You see how we have actually how the, you know, how integration is being, you know, let's say, realized using data level information. So right on top, you can see the integrated views which are based on that is being created through a set of integrated data that is created from multiple independent systems. And please understand that many of the corporates are operating in silo. You can imagine the governments operate in silos to a factor of 1,000 or more, right? So the level of silo that exists in government, because we have a, you know, federal level of government as a central government, there are state government, the local government and, you know, and it plays out, this is not specific to any country which has multiple level of government. Very, very difficult to get them on board on a single goal or a single, you know, mission or single objective, given the way they operate. So anyway, that cannot be addressed, you know, in this section. That's a different topic, but I think you get the point in terms of how we are using data to provide integrated view based on the sustainable development goals, which I talked about in the previous slide. Now, I am not going to go into the details of the architecture, but being part of the journey, these are obstacles that I all, and I'm going to address those obstacles that is coming out. The first option, the first question that I always get asked is architecture tends to be too rigid, and we, and the government operates in a very dynamic environment. So how do you plan for changes? Which is very important. It's all good to do a blueprint, which two years to do, but then the government has changed or even the process has changed or, you know, something has happened and therefore, you know, things need to be brought into the architecture blueprint so that it's been able to reflect in the reality of how the government is operating on that day. Second is it takes too long. We need something bigger. Absolutely. We cannot, you know, it is impossible for us to go to a state government or federal government or a ministry and say, I'm going to take five years to come blueprint and by the time we have a new election. And third is the IT function itself needs to reinvent itself in the digital. In many places, this is on our own personal experience that even though the court and court, the business of the government is talking about sometimes it's IT, which is slowing down the transformation. So therefore, there are certain things that need to be covered. And I'm going to cover these three major obstacles that are important from a from a trans perspective. First is, you know, what we have done as part of the architecture is that to take care of major changes. We know what changes can take place in this slide, actually, on your right, shows you the different kinds of changes that takes in government. The government coming up with a new scheme or a program, which leads to need some of the continuous management program and the life of a specific technology or moving from existing infrastructure to government cloud incorporate a new standard, merger of two or more departments, creation of a new department or a district, the functioning of a mission, critical application. So based on the historical knowledge that we have gathered, we know that fundamentally there are this limited number of changes that typically take place. So what we have done in the architecture framework is that we have tackled these changes through SOPs. If these changes take place, which is more or less what happens, then the state government or a ministry exactly knows what needs to be done. Therefore, it provides faster reaction time. It is not as if every time these changes happen, any of these changes happen. And of course, you can imagine that this is not an exhaustive list, but I think we get the idea. So if there is a change that happens, I know exactly the SOP. I, you know, pick up the SOP and know what changes to be done to the architecture and to the implementation of the audience. The first wave, we have tackled the dynamic aspect of the business operations of the government or the business of government, quote unquote. The second part is we have come up, if you remember my earlier slide, the poetry of the NDA framework talks about bringing data practices into enterprise architecture. So these are the different interventions that we have recommended. This is still a progress because please understand that governments in more or less around the world are not really structured to take in agile practices for various reasons. Of course, you know, I'm not doing the details of the interventions here, but I think, you know, you understand most of the points because given that we have had two questions on some discussions on agile practices also in the previous, you know, session, but the changes we have classified into changes required at the organizational level, at the process level, at the technology level, at the governance level. Now, having said that, it is still not easy because agile, as you all understand, is a paradigm shift. It is not a technology modernization, and governments at certain points, it's very difficult for the agile for various reasons. For instance, even at simple fact, like a language gap, you know, in government, people don't use the word sprint. You know, in the philosophy, we all understand that sprint survey, you know, is a fundamental vocabulary that we adopt in governments. People don't use sprint. So even as fundamental and as basic as that, those changes are not in place, but there are five key changes we have recommended in terms of, you know, procuring agile projects. Number one is we have recommended that we need to move from being contract centered. Government typically becomes very contract centered. And in most countries, what they do is there are three contracts and you look for the L1, the lowest price one. And therefore that's where it takes up the project. Here it moves from being contract centered to, you know, project centered. So there is a statement of objective. Second is we have also recommended that the vendor and the customer in this government ministry or a state needs to work, you know, as partners. You know, you don't have that customer-vendor relationship where you have an arms-length relationship with the vendor. And, you know, and the basic, and the basic model is that all vendors are there to fleece you, how it's going to work. You have to work in a partnership mode. The other important thing which I'd like to highlight is that typically, you know, most governments around the world at this point focus on lump sum, you know, fixed price. So this is the project. This will be requirements for the project and let's do a fixed bid so that the vendors can actually respond to the RFP versus incremental pricing, which is, again, a major change of policy level needs to be brought into the government. In terms of pricing options, there are multiple pricing options that we have recommended, but the most important and the most successful pricing option that we have seen at this point is entry, which is hybrid pricing. There is a mix of fixed and time and material pricing for appropriate segment or transaction-based pricing, which means the success of the success of the program or success of the, you know, or the project is also, you know, related to the vendors pricing and vendors charges. So this is, you know, you can understand, there are certain, you know, paradigm shift that needs to be brought in when agile is adopted in the government and we are working towards it, not reach to a point where agile is being adopted, but we are working towards it. Okay, let's see. The third one was, you know, whether the IT is ready. Now, I know that there are going to be sessions on IT for IT. So this is basically a variation of IT for IT that we have created for the government and you can see some of the words who are familiar with IT are very similar. So we have strategy to portfolio requirements to deploy, request, fulfill, detect, to correct. And these are the same pieces of IT for IT, but we have identified to the next level of details what needs to be done. So this provides a good framework for IT departments within the government to modify, to transform, to modernize themselves in terms of their practices, in terms of their policies, in terms of regulatory changes and, of course, technical changes to ensure that the digital transformation of the digital India that is being talked about is being realized. Now, these are some of the, we have talked about digital platforms. Remy was talking about digital platforms. So these are the, you know, some examples. Again, this is not an exhaustive digital platforms. Please, we call them as public digital platforms. And many people who come from India definitely are using these platforms and we have benefited from these platforms even as citizens. And you can imagine, given the size of the number, we have all of these within the top three in the world in terms of the volume of information and the volume of transaction currently going on. So you get an idea in terms of where the, where the government is working to. And there are a few more added to this list, but I think you, the basic idea is there on this slide. Now, one example, so if you see these digital platforms, they tend to be more infrastructure oriented platforms, which means these are the building blocks that are required to provide the basic technology capability to provide digital transformation. But at a business level, one example, how is how, you know, enterprise architecture is being applied is to improve the ease of business. So World Bank has index called EODB, it's called ease of doing business. People who understand the government domain will definitely be familiar with, you know, in terms of the different phases of ease of doing business. But fundamentally, it talks about how easy it is for, for, for, for a business to operate in a country, starting right from initiating the business all the way from closing the business, the business goes, if the organization goes out to see the bubbles, their number from one to 10 and the different activities to improve, you know, each of the phases. So some of the states is that they are using architectural practices to improve these activities, which is quite obvious because the index already is very easy for them to show the some benefit that comes out of architecture. The next slide shows you the linkage. So if you see the previous slide, these are the 10 bubbles, which are the 10 different phases, so to speak of EODB. And the next slide shows you the mapping between your EODB parameters, which is on your y-axis, which is on your left. And on top are the different architecture outcomes that is being achieved using the NDA framework. So you can see the mapping here and then the next slide, you see how it is working out. So on the bottom is the enterprise architecture value chain. The transformation outcomes are in the center, where what transformation outcomes the states are looking for, goals and goals. So states are using enterprise architecture, you know, driven digital transformation to improve their, you know, if people who come from India, you definitely know that states are now being ranked on UDB and countries and World Bank. Actually ranked the countries also on UDB. So this is an example of the infrastructure building blocks, which I showed you, the public digital platform are being used along with the architect to improve on a certain parameter on a certain goal, which is business oriented. Okay, so this is another example of a digital platform. So currently we are in the process of developing a public digital platform for higher education. So this is kind of a summary of what is going into it. So you can see the, you know, on your left are the existing systems that already exist. So you have the Raj, Chhattar, Shikshabian, loans, vocational skills, research, professors, SIP, so on and so forth. Then you have the education policy and you have the India architecture and the API. So all of the integration is based on API, which is being consumed and put together into a single which provides these services which are provided, which are listed on the right of this slide. So all the way from education loans to promotion of research to ranking, regulation, management of government institutions, so on and so forth. So this is an example of how the fundamental of the infrastructure building blocks are being used to create a total building block, so to speak. So one was the either doing business example. The second one is higher education. We have created one for health and that's currently being implemented. Implemented the other one that we're looking at at this point, agriculture. You can obviously imagine that health, education and agriculture are the fundamental sectors or the fundamental focus areas for almost any government in the world. And that's why these have been identified as the higher areas as part of digital India. And the reason it's quite obvious because these services or these sectors touch the citizens directly. So it's direct citizen contact. So if there's an improvement in the agriculture service, the farmer is directly benefited. If there's an improvement in the health service, you can immediately see, you know, benefited from a perspective. So that's what these are the priority platforms that are currently being developed even as we speak. And I'm sure we will have an update in a year or so when these platforms become take shape and they are adopted. So. Okay, so the last slide which shows the panoramic view of our digital landscape. It starts all the way from infrastructure on top, right? So there are places which are not where we have to provide broadband connectivity, you know, moving on to providing the capacity and capital, providing the policy, legal and the regulatory changes that are required to show the digital, the transform services. We spoke about platforms already, you know, that is contributing to the digital economy. And at this point, we always understand that many, many parts of the economy is being digital. In fact, India has a target of being a $1 billion digital economy by 2025, which is not very far. And we are definitely going to get it. And of course, all the way into smart living and smart city. So you can see that given the heterogeneous landscape that we operate in, the entire digital landscape which Digital India plans to cover, you know, spans all the way from basic infrastructure all the way to smart city and smart living. So I hope it gives you an idea of very, you know, summarized idea of what is currently going on. And thank you very much. Palav, thank you very much. It's fascinating stuff going on there, world leading stuff, I think, going on there in India and lots still to do, of course. I don't know if you have the ability to be on video as well, Palav, at the same time, but by all means, if you start your video, then folks can see you too. Been a number of requests for your contact information. And so there it is on the screen. That's that answered. And also, few people are asking about the slides. There you are, Palav, great. A few people are asking about the slides. They will be available. So obviously there's a lot of information on those slides and there's a lot for people to digest. So they will be available. So let me move to some questions. What are some of the key considerations to establish a real business IT coalition inside government organizations? So the fact that we look for is creating a common working group, so to speak, which has the representation both from the sectoral perspective of culture, education or commerce and industries in case of doing business as IT. But in most cases, what we do is we have tried to make sure that there is a lot of buying and direct involvement from the business side. Business as in quote unquote, the government operations side, so that they take ownership of it. So it's an entirely IT driven issue and we know that it's not easy in the government to push something through for reasons that some of us would probably understand if we have acted with the government. So one of the considerations that we definitely look and the most primary consideration is that we would like to be respect the minister or the ministry or department to take ownership of these transformation projects. Because as you would understand that these probably help in their own quality of governance, that is very important. And agriculture ministry exists to provide better services for farmers and better foods. IT is definitely enabling some of that journey. So this is the primary consideration that we need to take into refactoring when we design a platform or the architecture around that. Right, OK. With such a big percentage of the population not having basic needs, how do you achieve digital culture and behavior, the challenge? Yeah, it's very interesting because a lot of people did tell us that yeah, if people have some portion of the people are physically literate, do you expect them to be digitally literate? And how do you ensure that the services are inclusive? But what we have found in the past five, six years ever since transformation took off is that people become digitally literate before they become physically literate. Today it is not. And as we can see that in our own kids, right? I mean, they know how to use a smartphone even before they know how to read alphabet. So it has never been an issue in terms of whether the services are being consumed in the urban level, urban centers are being consumed in the rural centers where people might be semi-literate or some of them, a few of them could be illiterate. But what happens is we do have this concept of a citizen service center where somebody who's unable to consume a service on a smartphone can still go and get a service in an alternative means which could be through a kiosk or a physical office or a government outlet, so to speak. Yes. Right. OK. Well, we just time for one last question. And then we'll try and get the other ones answered. I know you've worked in private practice as well as government Palab in your career. Do you think this approach is applicable to the business sector as well? Or is it just something that is particular to the government, do you think, the approach that's being taken here? In my view, because I, as you said, Steve, because I worked in both sides of the equation or the table. So yeah, my own personal experience is definitely applicable to the business sector as well with certain modifications in respect to the alignment that needs to be applied. It is a lot more difficult in the government sector because we understand it's not, it is a humongous task to get a state government and local level government aligned to the national government or the industry. Yeah. And some of us do understand that if you worked in the government, it's likely to be much easier in the corporate sector because there's a lot more alignment. Even though the corporate sector did talk about, you know, Remy was talking about operating in silos, we all understand that the silos that exist in the government are humongous, it's very, very difficult. So yes, the question definitely it is applicable to the business sector with certain modifications.