Cloud computing a new way to roll out e-governance projects in india

INTERNATIONALComputer Engineering and Technology ENGINEERING
International Journal of JOURNAL OF COMPUTER (IJCET), ISSN 0976-
6367(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6375(Online) Volume 4, Issue 2, March – April (2013), © IAEME
& TECHNOLOGY (IJCET)

ISSN 0976 – 6367(Print)
ISSN 0976 – 6375(Online) IJCET
Volume 4, Issue 2, March – April (2013), pp. 61-72
© IAEME: www.iaeme.com/ijcet.asp
Journal Impact Factor (2013): 6.1302 (Calculated by GISI)
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CLOUD COMPUTING-A NEW WAY TO ROLL OUT
E-GOVERNANCE PROJECTS IN INDIA

Prof. Manas Kumar Sanyal1, Sudhangsu Das2, Sajal Bhadra3
1
(Department of Business Administration, University of Kalyani, Nadia, WB
2
3

Abstract

E-governance serve the citizens need always in better way. Information and
communication Technology (ICT) made lots of changes in governance process but at the
same time it requires efforts for changing process, building infrastructures and capacity
enhancement. Cloud computing can help Government to speed up in rolling out of e-
Governance projects and to reach out it to a larger number of people in a short period. Since,
Government is putting a lot of effort towards Information Technology (IT) cost shrinking and
making it available for all citizens equally in urban and rural areas, Cloud computing may
lead to significant role not only to scale down the cost of operations for rolling out e-
governance initiatives but also expedite the process as well. It entails use over the Internet of
computing hardware, software and network infrastructure and applications that are remotely
hosted. Present study is about to analyze and to examine the application of cloud computing
“pay-per-use” approach in context of Indian e-Governance projects. Also, authors have
proposed an effective model for incorporating the concept of cloud computing in Indian e-
Governance, which would reduce cost and will be accessible to all states in India.
Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has been adopted to validate this proposed model.

Keywords: E-GOVERNANCE, CLOUD COMPUTING, ICT, PAY-PER-USE, SDC

1. INTRODUCTION

According to announcement of NEGP plan of Government of India (GI) on 18th May
2006, all public services will be accessible to common people locally through common
service delivery outlets and ensure efficiency, transparency and reliability of such services at
affordable costs. GI has declared 27 mission mode projects and 8 components to reach out

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International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976-

these services to common people [8]. The existing and ongoing projects has proven that e-
Governance projects have smoothen the Government services by providing transparency,
effective working, instant response and availability of Government information to the end
within a time frame. The existing e-Governance projects in India are mainly implemented in
distributed nature and maintained state wise individual infrastructure for the same kind of
Government services that increases the total e-Governance projects roll out cost. To avoid
these discrepancies, the new concept, Cloud computing can hold a lot of financial benefits for
Government to roll out e-Governance projects.
Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on demand network access
to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage,
applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal
management effort or service provider interaction [11].
Cloud computing technology is beneficial to all users. It meets every body’s
requirement without neglecting security and privacy at the time of business transaction over
the Internet, and at the same time provides ease of use for the client. With the Cloud
computing technology individual can connect to the cloud from personal computer or portal
devices, over the Internet to mirror own data into Cloud account. For large-scale businesses,
company can eliminate capital investments to buy an additional number of hardware,
software, services for all employees since cloud computing platform contains all the
necessary functions and software for every one easy access and computing of the cloud.
Cloud computing vendors are claiming that cloud computing will “transform the way IT is
consumed and managed, promising improved cost efficiencies, accelerated innovation, faster
time-to-market, and the ability to scale applications on demand”.
The main objective of Government is to enable the e-Governance projects to meet the
wide range of requirement for Government to Citizen, Government to Business, Inter/Intra
Government Employees, and Government to Employee services with the help of Cloud
computing technology in an optimal manner with regard to cost, security, flexibility,
operational reliability and robustness.

The Key drivers for Government to adopt cloud computing strategy are:

Value for Money

Cloud Technology can help the Government to reduce duplicate efforts and increase savings
by effective utilization of resources through virtualization –

Allow for “measured” payment (pay as you use)
Reduced energy use
Enable agencies to reinvest in, and concentrate on, core objectives
Adopt, where fit for purpose, modern technologies and practices that improve ICT
effectiveness and efficiency
No need to purchase hardware, software licenses or implementation services for
individual needs

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Flexibility
Create a flexible services-oriented environment for agencies –
Rapid provisioning and deployment of services and on demand scalability and
elasticity for services and capabilities
Increased scope of the availability of the latest version of software
On-demand self sufficient service
Ubiquitous network access
Location independent resource
Rapid elasticity
Cloud architectures allow rapid deployment of turn key test environments with little
or no customization

Operational reliability and robustness
Provide more reliable and robust systems to reach out the all Government services to
common people-
Cloud can help in analyzing huge volumes of data and detecting any fraud. Ensuring
data privacy, storage persistence and reliable DBMS backup
Ensuring robustness and scalability on demand
Cloud computing might give extra milestone to Government of India to reduce
implementation cost for its different states and help to moving towards uniform ICT
compliance country.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

In the year 2008 Saxena Meetali described the impact of technologies on the practices
and administration of Governments and the relationships between public servants and society
[13]. Authors also explored how e-Governance initiatives of Government of India
transformed the rural masses and the changing face of Rural India with the help of
application of Information Technology is brought out. Bagga, R. K. and Gupta Piyush
identified different aspects of e-Governance approaches in India in 2009. The main study was
in critical issues, challenges of e-Governance projects and finally focused on different
approach and methodology for project [1]. In the year 2009, Gujarathi, D.M., Patil Rakesh S.
also emphasized the major factors responsible for successful of implementation and
sustenance of different e-Governance projects for social development in rural area [8]. In the
same year, Shirin Madon explained about the proliferation of e-Governance projects in
developing countries and their impact on local communities. Shirin Madon drew’s on 18
years of research in India in which time many changes have occurred in terms of
development ideology and in governance reform for achieving development goals [16].
According to Gartner in 2009, the interest of cloud computing is growing among the industry
to implement IT services in more cost effective way. The Vendors are also started to change
the Cloud computing strategy and variations like private cloud computing and hybrid
approaches, compounding the hype [9]. In the book “Handbook of Cloud Computing “,
Borko Furht, Armando Escalante have explained clearly how the cloud computing is
reshaping information technology to scale down IT cost. This book have published in the
year 2010 and presents the systems, tools, and services of the leading providers of cloud
computing; including Google, Yahoo, Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft [2]. Mukherjee, K. and
Shaoo, G. have described the way of accessing e-Governance in cloud computing architecture

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in 2010 and conclude that cloud computing could be future frame work in e-Governance by
providing massive computing power, unlimited storage capacity, Less Maintenance cost,
availability of use full e-Governance web services [7]. In the year 2010, Prasad, A.,Chaurasia
S.,Singh A., Gour G. highlights the key point in favor of service oriented cloud computing
acceptability in e-Governance. Also Authors present tight similarities between generic
Governments functioning and the service oriented cloud approach [12]. Rastogi, A. in 2010
proposed a framework to overcome existing problem in e-Governance services like
Infrastructure Development, Accessibility, Security, Trust and privacy, Transparency,
Permanent Availability and preservation, Cost Structure. Author drawn a conclusion that
People can get services than traditional computing with reduced cost with the help of cloud
computing [15].

3. CLOUD COMPUTING: OVERVIEW

In terms of implementation of cloud computing, there are three type of cloud
computing shown in figure 1 [17].
Private cloud is build up in such a way whose services are provided by an IT department to
those in its own organization without limitation of network bandwidth, security, software,
and hardware. A private cloud become highly virtualized, stringing together mass quantities
of IT infrastructure into one or a few easily managed logical resource pools. Since, the
Private cloud infrastructure is operated solely for an organization, It is also called internal
cloud computing.
Public Cloud Services delivered over the public Internet and available to anyone who wants
to purchase the service. The cloud services generally hosted into central server away from the
users and it made accessible to the general public or a large industry group as “pay-per-use”
basis. This type of cloud is called external cloud computing and provides all the benefits of
the cost reduction, scalability and easy maintenance.
Hybrid Cloud is a combination of two or more clouds (private, community, or public) that
interoperate together and enables high level portability to data and application. It manages the
normal work load of private cloud computing as well as having the capability to meet the
peak demand of public cloud computing. This type of cloud computing is seen as future of
cloud computing.

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According to the concept of cloud computing, there are three levels of cloud computing as
shown in figure 2 [5] .Each level provide a service that is virtualized, where they do not have
to depend on any physical artifacts. SAAS (Software as a Service) is a service designed to
use software as rental basis instead of purchase. It becomes most popular type of cloud
computing for its high flexibility, great services, enhanced scalability and less maintenance.
Also Users does not require to install application in own computer. Yahoo mail, Google docs,
CRM applications is the best example of SAAS.
PAAS (Platform as a Service) is referring to a platform that can be accessed on demand. It
provides infrastructure on which software developers can build new applications or extend
existing ones without the cost and complexity of buying and managing the underlying
hardware and software and provisioning hosting capabilities. In other words, it provides the
supporting infrastructure to enable the end user develop his own solutions.

IAAS (Infrastructure as a Service) provides flexibility to the users by allowing them to
access infrastructure like Storage, Network equipment, Hardware, Web server, Data Base
space etc. As per the requirement, there is no point to worry for an organization to buy this
costly infrastructure in order to run the application. Organizations only hire the required
infrastructure from IAAS providers and load up their libraries, applications, and data. A
popular use of IAAS is in hosting websites.

4. EXISTING E-GOVERNANCE SERVICES

In our present study we have examined existing e-Governance approach in context of
India and developed a new framework to configure cloud computing to deliver Indian e-
Governance projects. Efforts has also been made to estimate the benefits after incorporating
the cloud computing.
The Government of India has prepared a common e-Governance delivery model
across the country to provide citizen service in better manner. The main objective of this
approach is to launch state wise application, Common Service Centre (CSC), e-Kiosk
machine, State Wide Area Network (SWAN) and State Data Centre (SDC). CSC and e-Kiosk
directly interacts with the common citizen as front tier of this model to collect the data
through various e-Governance services. In the figure 3, it is being depicted that CSCs and e-
Kiosk’s are available at nearest locality of the people so that people can access it easily for
nominal fees. These front tier outlets are also broadband enabled, thus it is connecting the
rural citizens through the Internet and SWAN. The SWAN provides connectivity up to block
level with 2 Mbps (E-1 link) leased line of BSNL. The SWAN is conceived as the primary
information highway to increase data processing and

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service delivery efficiency for various e-Governance services across districts through Blocks,
Subs Divisional Headquarters, Gram Panchayats, and Municipalities [10]. The main Goal of
SWAN is to provide backbone network for data, voice & video communication. The SDC is
connected with the all CSC through SWAN to provide Central Data Repository of the State,
Secure Data Storage, Disaster Recovery, Remote Management and Service Integration etc.
SDC would also provide better operation & management control and minimize overall cost of
Data Management.

5. PROPOSED CLOUD BASED E-GOVERNANCE FRAMEWORK

As we know that Government of India are deploying e-Governance projects for each
state under NEGP plan and providing fund for each state to implement the projects in the
country, GI fetching financial crisis to provide these huge amount of fund and as a result the
implementation process of e-Governance projects are being delayed. We are proposing a new
framework to incorporate cloud computing for e-Governance services to minimize the
implementation cost of e-Governance projects in India. In the figure 4, we have mentioned
some e-Governance services of GI like E-Police, E-Court, GIS, Telemedicine, E-District, and
Environment Management etc. as SAAS of cloud computing for end users. For this purpose,
GI can build a single application for each service to share among all the state in India by
hosting the application in central web server, which facilitates to reduce deployment cost as
well as maintenance cost and technological up gradation cost. In our framework we have
considered all e-Governance application services in central level to give an account wise

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access for all application developer as “pay-per-use” basis to deliver PAAS of cloud
computing. Few of the services is being depicted in the figure Fig-4 like OS provisioning,
Queuing, Database service, Middle ware, Server load balance, work flow service, Billing
management, Content Management, License management, Integration service, Backup
service, Security service. Application developer will get an access to license for the specific
service as per the requirement and just need to pay membership fees for the license. It will be
effective to save development cost of service or purchase cost of service. To implement e-
Governance, GI is about to set up State wise Data Centre to store all the Government data
into one Data Centre regardless of application or nature of the data. Each SDC is having its
own Security plan, Backup plan and Disaster plan to ensure seamless and secure data service.
In our proposed framework, we want to incorporate IAAS of cloud computing by introducing
a central controller service among the all SDC to backup all data into a single backup server
and backup server will be designed in such a way so that server will be capable to provide
data in any kind of disaster. Instead of multiple backup servers and multiple disaster
recovery, single point backup will help to cut down server maintenance cost and Database
server hardware cost. Along with this, proposed framework will enable on demand access for
all the costly hardware like web server, network bandwidth, storage, DSN and DHCP etc.,
mainly used by the Network Architect to avoid individual cost.

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6. TESTING: THE TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE MODEL TO ADOPT
CLOUD COMPUTING IN E-GOVERNANCE PROJECTS

It is always difficult to take decision to adopt new technology for any kind of
situation in enterprise level. So, Hypothetical test for any conceptual model is very
important to avoid any bad impact before implementation of the model. Technology
Acceptance Model (TAM) may be used to test any conceptual model regarding adoption
of new technology, to measure how the users going to accept and use the new technology.
The main objective of TAM is to forecast idea about the user acceptance and to find out
any design fault before users have any significant experience with a system [4]. Davis
suggested that Users inspiration can be explained as perceived usefulness (PU), perceived
ease of use (PEOU), attitude toward using, and behavioral intentions to use. Mainly Davis
hypnotized that behavioral intention of a user determinant that whether users are going
use or reject the system [4, 5]. Presently, Researchers and practitioners are using this tool
enormously to test acceptance of any new technology as it is very cost effective and less
time consuming. In this study, Authors also have used TAM to test the above mentioned
conceptual diagram towards adopting cloud computing in Indian e-Governance projects.

The logical flow of TAM is used to measure the user acceptance are shown in Fig-V

Fig V: TAM Acceptance diagram

Authors have conducted survey among 38 Government IT executives who are
closely working in different e-Governance projects in India and 45 Could Computing IT
professionals to justify the prospects and benefits of cloud computing adoption in Indian
e-Governance projects.
Two different set of questionnaires has been used to collect different kind of
information from Government IT executives and cloud computing IT professionals
respectively.

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The following constructors have been identified based on the survey response –

TABLE 1: Cloud computing, TAM acceptance constructors

Constructors Description Response in
Percentage

Perceived Usefulness Government IT executives & IT professionals believe 92
that use of cloud computing will give extra mileage in
the process to roll out e-Governance project.

Perceived Ease of Use The degree to which Government IT executives & IT 94
professionals have been agreed that cloud computing
will make implementation process, maintenance
process and extensible process easier.

Attitude Toward Using Good to feel mentality among the Government IT 80
executives & IT professionals to accept cloud
computing in e-governance projects

Behavioral Intentions to Having thought in mind to use cloud computing for 84
Use long time

User Satisfaction Government IT executives believe that User 91
satisfaction will extend.

World wide popularity of e-governance projects among all 98
Acceptability of cloud
computing

Demand of cost Governments are looking for cost reduction in data 93
reduction & center investment, and alternative solutions for the
maintenance simplicity current complex maintenance process.
in e-Governance Data
Center.

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In respect of above identified constructors, The TAM diagram –Fig. VI, has been used to test
the cloud computing acceptability in Indian e-Governance projects-

H1a Technology Acceptance Model

Perceived
Demand of cost H3a
usefulness
reduction &
maintenance
simplicity in e- H5
Governance Data H4a
Center
Adoption of
H2 User Behavioral cloud
Satisfaction intention computing in
E-Governance
Worldwide
Acceptability H3b
Perceived ease H4b
of cloud of use
computing

H1b

Fig. VI: TAM Diagram towards acceptance of cloud computing in E-Governance

Hypothesis

The below mentioned factors has been hypothesized in this study to realize the acceptance of
cloud computing in Indian e-Governance projects-

H1a: Government already having some demand to reduce investment for data center in each
state in India. Also Government IT Mangers frequently face problem to do maintenance in
data center. This kind of thought made influence for perceived usefulness.
H1b: Worldwide Acceptability of cloud computing have major role on perceived ease of use
to adopt cloud computing in Indian e-Governance projects.
H2: Perceived ease of use of cloud computing in e-Governance projects also influence
perceived usefulness to adopt cloud computing in e-Governance projects.
H3a: Perceived usefulness to adopt cloud computing in e-Governance projects positively
increased user satisfaction in e-Governance projects.
H3b: Perceived ease of use to adopt cloud computing in e-Governance projects positively
increased user satisfaction in e-Governance projects.
H4a: User satisfaction in e-Governance projects has positive effects on Behavioural intention
of user.
H4b: Government Leaders having positive attitude to accept cloud commuting in e-
Governance projects.
H5: Behavioural intention of user positively makes possible to adopt cloud computing in e-
Governance projects.

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7. RESULT

In a nutshell, from the TABLE I and FIG. VI, World wide acceptance of cloud
computing in various kind of data center is a main factor which helps to all Government IT
executives, Leaders and IT professionals in different domains to make some perception that
uses of cloud computing in e-Governance projects also would be easy to use. The
implementation cost and maintenance cost of data center for each state is always treating as
road blockage for Indian government as the cost is used to get simply multiplied by the
number of states that are going to use the data center. So, cost reduction is always in mind of
Government, IT executives, & Leaders, which influenced to them to make some perception
that usefulness of cloud computing in e-Governance data center would be great success. The
past experience of IT professionals in cloud computing also has put them in same perception
about the usefulness of cloud computing in e-Governance projects.
Users those are using cloud computing in others field has got tremendous success and uses of
e-Governance in India are also being able to make user happy to get Government services,
these points leads to get perception that users would be satisfied.
Therefore, cloud computing in e-Governance projects could be a solution to roll out e-
Governance projects in India.

8. CONCLUSION

Adoption of Cloud Technology to e-Governance in India will improve the
interconnectivity, radical cost reduction, easy maintenance of application and Data Centre.
This study also concludes that Pay-per-use concept helps to speed up to roll out e-
Governance project in India.

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Cloud computing a new way to roll out e-governance projects in india

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