Best Managed : Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board : TWADNEST
Best Managed : Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board : TWADNEST
Saturday, July 04, 2009
TWAD or Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board implements water supply and drainage / sewerage schemes at a cost of around Rs.1500 crores every year for all urban and rural local bodies in Tamil Nadu. To manage this huge task a good MIS was required which can also improve the productivity in achieving total transparency in the system. Before implementation of this project, data collection and compilation was done from 114 offices of TWAD Board spread across the entire state. Data were collected in each of 114 offices using standalone applications and it was sent to the head office and regional offices via email, CDs etc. The data collected at head office and regions were compiled using another standalone software manually. This process was very time-consuming. Hence the department planned to integrate the whole process using a Internet/Intranet based app developed and implemented jointly by 'TWAD Board' and 'NIC, Chennai'. The aim of this project is to use IT to implement e-Governance in TWAD Board in order to attain improved productivity and transparency in the organization.
Shri. A. Rajasekar, Manager (EDP)
Q What were the key technical challenges that were faced while implementing this project? Choosing right technology and platform for this kind of a mega project, and then adhering to the open standard were the main challenges faced by the development team. Using the Ajax technique without compromising on security issues to enhance the user experience was another challenge. Using broadband Internet connectivity to access the online application till the time TNSWAN was connected to TWAD intranet again another
QWhat according to you sets this project apart from any other in its class? What's the unique selling proposition (USP) of this project?
The kind of efforts that have gone in towards building a centralized database, establishing the network infrastructure, improving the hardware and peripherals infrastructure of 114 offices of TWAD Board, the development of ERP like application software make this project unique in Government sector. The very fact that this application is being accessed by all the 114 offices of TWAD Board spread across the state itself is an indication that this project deserves a special mention. A comprehensive database of more than 1.5 GB covering various functional activities of TWAD Board has been developed and maintained successfully since April 2007 is another reason that sets this project distinct.
Overall TWAD Board is the first government agency to implement this G2G e-Governance project of mega size in the state of Tamil Nadu.
After the deployment of the project, due to centralized system, the data collection is done by automating the processes at the field offices. Now a lot of periodicals, statutory schedules, daily reports, MIS reports and board reports are generated by all offices online as and when required without the need for any manual compilation. The application also provides a single platform for automating financial accounting, HR management, project monitoring and water quality management.
For the connectivity of all these 114 branches, TWAD had used NIC, BSNL and TNSWAN as backbone networks. This backbone offered some additional benefits such as a readymade platform video conferencing over IP. So TWAD had decided to deploy Tandberg desktop video conferencing solutions on each offices. TWADNEST can be accessed from the TWAD website which is a signal point of interface for G2G and G2C. For government, it can provide MIS data where departments can see the overall project status and money spent at a near real-time basis and can drill down to the smallest level of data if required. For the customers, it gives quite a few things. The first is the integration of this application with the water testing labs spread across the state. The complete report generation, test selection and billing for the labs is done through this system. Anybody can bring samples to these test labs and can get it checked for pollutants by paying a small fraction of money. At the same time, the board also conducts regular tests across the state. Once the tests are done, the report goes directly into a centralized database with the location information which is then ported on a GIS map of the state. And using this GIS map, anybody, even a visitor can immediately see the status and condition of water in different regions of the state.
Company Scenario
Before Deployment
* The mgmt of the projects and the money assigned for the project by 114 branch offices of TWAD board was very difficult and used to take a lot of time due to exchange of data over slow & unreliable medium.
After Deployment
* Now each office is connected through a WAN and exchange data over the TWADNEST MSI system saving time and enhancing accuracy.
Implementation Partner
Thiru K.Srinivasa Raghavan, NIC
As of the hardware side of the deployment, unlike other government bodies, TWAD hosts most of its application in its own datacenter situated at the Marina Beach, Chennai. For running TWADNEST, they are using Server Platform with 64-bit Dual Itanium2 processor of 1.5 GHz having 4MB L3 Cache per processor Intel E8870 Chipset / 16GB (2x8GB) DDR-SDRAM based servers on top of which Red Hat Linux Enterprise System � ver.4 (64 Bit OS) is running. And for the database and application server they are using Oracle 10g Enterprise Edition for Linux Web Server and Apache-Tomcat 5.5 respectively. For building the interface they have used mainly Java/J2EE Technologies, AJAX, HTML, CSS, and XML etc to give the user a good and simple working experience. The board is expecting the life for this project to be at least to twelve years.
Saturday, July 04, 2009
TWAD or Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board implements water supply and drainage / sewerage schemes at a cost of around Rs.1500 crores every year for all urban and rural local bodies in Tamil Nadu. To manage this huge task a good MIS was required which can also improve the productivity in achieving total transparency in the system. Before implementation of this project, data collection and compilation was done from 114 offices of TWAD Board spread across the entire state. Data were collected in each of 114 offices using standalone applications and it was sent to the head office and regional offices via email, CDs etc. The data collected at head office and regions were compiled using another standalone software manually. This process was very time-consuming. Hence the department planned to integrate the whole process using a Internet/Intranet based app developed and implemented jointly by 'TWAD Board' and 'NIC, Chennai'. The aim of this project is to use IT to implement e-Governance in TWAD Board in order to attain improved productivity and transparency in the organization.
Shri. A. Rajasekar, Manager (EDP)
Q What were the key technical challenges that were faced while implementing this project? Choosing right technology and platform for this kind of a mega project, and then adhering to the open standard were the main challenges faced by the development team. Using the Ajax technique without compromising on security issues to enhance the user experience was another challenge. Using broadband Internet connectivity to access the online application till the time TNSWAN was connected to TWAD intranet again another
QWhat according to you sets this project apart from any other in its class? What's the unique selling proposition (USP) of this project?
The kind of efforts that have gone in towards building a centralized database, establishing the network infrastructure, improving the hardware and peripherals infrastructure of 114 offices of TWAD Board, the development of ERP like application software make this project unique in Government sector. The very fact that this application is being accessed by all the 114 offices of TWAD Board spread across the state itself is an indication that this project deserves a special mention. A comprehensive database of more than 1.5 GB covering various functional activities of TWAD Board has been developed and maintained successfully since April 2007 is another reason that sets this project distinct.
Overall TWAD Board is the first government agency to implement this G2G e-Governance project of mega size in the state of Tamil Nadu.
After the deployment of the project, due to centralized system, the data collection is done by automating the processes at the field offices. Now a lot of periodicals, statutory schedules, daily reports, MIS reports and board reports are generated by all offices online as and when required without the need for any manual compilation. The application also provides a single platform for automating financial accounting, HR management, project monitoring and water quality management.
For the connectivity of all these 114 branches, TWAD had used NIC, BSNL and TNSWAN as backbone networks. This backbone offered some additional benefits such as a readymade platform video conferencing over IP. So TWAD had decided to deploy Tandberg desktop video conferencing solutions on each offices. TWADNEST can be accessed from the TWAD website which is a signal point of interface for G2G and G2C. For government, it can provide MIS data where departments can see the overall project status and money spent at a near real-time basis and can drill down to the smallest level of data if required. For the customers, it gives quite a few things. The first is the integration of this application with the water testing labs spread across the state. The complete report generation, test selection and billing for the labs is done through this system. Anybody can bring samples to these test labs and can get it checked for pollutants by paying a small fraction of money. At the same time, the board also conducts regular tests across the state. Once the tests are done, the report goes directly into a centralized database with the location information which is then ported on a GIS map of the state. And using this GIS map, anybody, even a visitor can immediately see the status and condition of water in different regions of the state.
Company Scenario
Before Deployment
* The mgmt of the projects and the money assigned for the project by 114 branch offices of TWAD board was very difficult and used to take a lot of time due to exchange of data over slow & unreliable medium.
After Deployment
* Now each office is connected through a WAN and exchange data over the TWADNEST MSI system saving time and enhancing accuracy.
Implementation Partner
Thiru K.Srinivasa Raghavan, NIC
As of the hardware side of the deployment, unlike other government bodies, TWAD hosts most of its application in its own datacenter situated at the Marina Beach, Chennai. For running TWADNEST, they are using Server Platform with 64-bit Dual Itanium2 processor of 1.5 GHz having 4MB L3 Cache per processor Intel E8870 Chipset / 16GB (2x8GB) DDR-SDRAM based servers on top of which Red Hat Linux Enterprise System � ver.4 (64 Bit OS) is running. And for the database and application server they are using Oracle 10g Enterprise Edition for Linux Web Server and Apache-Tomcat 5.5 respectively. For building the interface they have used mainly Java/J2EE Technologies, AJAX, HTML, CSS, and XML etc to give the user a good and simple working experience. The board is expecting the life for this project to be at least to twelve years.
Comments
Post a Comment