| 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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The objective of the technology group was to provide the decision support to the sectoral stakeholders through scientifically organized, comprehensive, multi-purpose, compatible and large scale (village level) geo-spatial databases supporting analytical tools. These activities were executed by a well trained team of multi-disciplinary scientists. Government of Gujarat provisioned a modern infrastructure along with state-of-the-art hardware and software facility. As a part of project, it was required to study the land transformation and development over years, a satellite digital data library of multiple sensors of last twenty years has been established and conventional data sets of departments have been co-registered with satellite data. The geo-spatial databases have been created using conventional maps, high resolution 2D and 3D imagery and official datasets (attributes). The databases include terrain characteristics, natural and administrative systems, agriculture, water resources, city survey maps, village maps with survey numbers, water harvesting structures, water supply, irrigation, power, communications, ports, land utilization pattern, infrastructure, urbanization, environmental development, forests, sanctuaries, mining area, etc.
The GIS solution developed by BISAG is a very powerful tool which can handle, manipulate and integrate both the spatial and non-spatial data.
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| 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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The project stated with the objective to provide decision support to the sectoral stakeholders through scientifically organized, comprehensive, multi-purpose, compatible and large scale (village level) geo-spatial databases and supporting analytical tools. The applications of space technology and geo-informatics have been operational in almost all the development sectors of state. Key stakeholders of the project were BISAG team, senior administrators and project officers from the respective stakeholder department and other nodal agencies and institutions who supported in the database sharing and integration. Details of the key stake holders is given below:
- Geo- Spatial and Software development team of Bhaskaracharya Institute of Space Applications and Geo-informatics (BISAG),
- Department of Science and technology, Government of Gujarat for overall support and guidance for the project
- Whole of Government (departments, ministries and administrative authorities) are users and stakeholders of use of GIS platform and need based application services which include
o Agriculture and cooperation department
o Education Department
o Forests and Environment department
o Health and family welfare department
o General Administrative Department (Planning)
o Home Department
o Industries and Mines department
o Revenue department
o Ports and transportation department
o Rural development department
o Social justice and empowerment department
o Water resources department
o Women and Child Development department
o Urban development department
o Water supply department
o Science and Technology department
o Roads and Buildings department
o Panchayat department
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| 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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- First requirement was to bring ownership of maximum number of stakeholders in the initiative. Every stakeholder was ensured the output as per their need in a time bound fashion.
- Financial support was available from all the stakeholders who provided proportionate funds for the initiative. The profit to the stakeholders was in terms of application development, provision of services and human resource development, etc.
- All stakeholders provided the need based fund support for the project and specific needs.
- The project involve the overall structural change and resource allocation in the areas of
• Infrastructure:
Database, Software and application development at BISAG
Central service facility – BISAG, GSDC.
Network Infrastructure – GSWAN
Capacity building – BISAG
• People:
Government functionaries at different hierarchies, NGO’s and common man.
• Process:
Decentralized functioning, common objective and integrated applications.
• Synergy among sectors:
Convergence of program
Interdependence of database
Government guidelines
• Public value:
Proper diagnosis of problem
Value added services
Transparency and conflict resolution
Ensuring services to deployed for inclusive growth
• Holistic development
Data from all the sectors in same format
Establishment of inter-relationships and criteria
Sectoral normalization
Need based development
• Horizontal and vertical cooperation
Vertical cooperation through departmental mandates
Horizontal cooperation through policies, guidelines and supporting documents.
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| 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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Innovator in GIS applications for state government: Almost all the government departments are now on GIS base having specialized usage of GIS technologies. The procedures through proactive initiative of department of science and technology was simplified in such a way that all most all sectors are partner in this initiative and data base are seamlessly available to all the stakeholders.
Value-add for government: Almost all the G2G organizations have benefited through this in terms of:
• Value added products
• Suitability concept for a wide range of problems
• Decision support system
Inclusiveness: Social inclusiveness, Communication between government and society, transparency, monitoring and public governance
Performance enhancement through:
o Data sharing among agencies
o System sharing
o Efficient use of resources (avoid duplication)
o Seamless integration of data processes, systems, services, etc
o Security, confidentiality
Whole-of-Government involvement: The application brings about the transparency in the system ensuring the effective planning of government schemes, quality implementation and monitoring, resulting in convenience to the citizens through various services. The work done for various government departments include
o Water Resources (Classification of watersheds, hydro-geomorphic studies, ground water prospects, cadastral level water sources action plans, mapping water bodies, water harvesting structures)
o Road and Commutation planning – Gujarat Urban Development Mission (GUDM) – Development plans, administrative boundaries, water supply, drainage, land-use
o Agricultural output (support for precision farming, crop condition assessment, District and village level crop inventory, spatial variability of mapping of soil-nutrients, geo-spatial information system for coastal districts of state)
o Environment and forest (mapping and monitoring of mangroves in the coastal districts, geo-spatial systems for wild-life sanctuaries)
o Energy and Petrochemicals (Rooftop solar power generation project)
o Panchayat Department (Village level macro-micro decision)
o Conceptual application of rural development department (Rural GIS: Village amenities information system)
o Revenue department (Computerization of city survey maps, village map information system)
o Industries & Mines department (identification of suitable land for investment locations, earmark industrial zones, promote balanced regional industrial development), Superimposing physical infrastructure like Power, Gas, National Highway Road, Water, Port, SEZ, waste disposal, etc
o Commissionerate of geological mining: Mineral atlas
o Directorate of petroleum
o Gujarat Electricity board (information retrieval on Network, Circle, Division, Sub-division, substation, feeder, assets – LT Pole, LT Line, HT Pole, HT Line, DTR, Substation.
o Gujarat power cooperation limited – Power plants, along with MSL height, areas, lithology, earthquake zone, geology distance.
o Education department – School mapping, site selection, identification of villages served, etc. (Mapping of actual 40943 school locations, CRC, BRC, and Cluster Boundary in GIS environment.)
o Disaster Management (Medical, Education, Housing, demography, etc)
o Tribal development department
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| 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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Process: ISO compliant for establishing and regulating process and auditing the same as per international standards. BISAG facility and services are ISO 9001, ISO 27001 and CMMI 3 certified in the area of service delivery and innovation for the institute.
Besides these, proactive independent third party evaluation are been conducted to maintain the efficiency and the quality of the followed processes. Government of India team have evaluated and assessed the facilities and services.
Government of Gujarat proactively approached Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences – Government of India and Chairman of National Natural Resources Management System to evaluate GIS systems at BISAG with respect to its applications in various areas.
The secretary as a chairman constituted a committee where Chief Executive Officer of National Spatial Data Infrastructure and Director NATMO (former Surveyor General of India) and a renowned professor from IIT Bombay evaluated the system.
Government of India – Planning Commission constituted a task force which has evaluated the GIS activities in the BISAG.
Periodic evaluations by senior civil servants and technical experts are done on regular basis. Moreover stakeholders feedback are continuously incorporated in the system.
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| 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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The primary obstacles in the implementation of the project were
- The compilation and quality control of data formats, scales, quality and sector based content for various departments were a challenge. This was resolved by active involvement of key stakeholders from each of the institutes or departments and sharing of required information for development of the required data sets
- All the map layers in conventional and also in digital format were to be brought into high resolution 2D and 3D imagery and official attributes.
- Assessment of exact need of the stakeholder departments were to be addressed with minimal changes in the exiting process and simplicity.
- Cost of software – there was a challenge to identify the cost of each of the component of the entire solution. This issue of cost distribution was resolved by going for in-house development. Each of the stakeholder department was charged based on the manpower effort for that particular component and requirement.
- Capacity building through collaboration - There was a need of a large ecosystem that can help in creation of an entire solution across large stakeholder group. This challenge was mitigated through active collaboration and proactive involvement of senior official and administrators across stakeholders and creating an entire ecosystem for future development and growth of the initiative
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