International Beat

Setting a precedence for certainly the developing world and perhaps also for the developed world, India on Thursday set in motion its largest e-governance project that aims to provide a unique identification number to each of its billion plus citizens in the next two years.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh yesterday invited Nandan Nilekeni one of the founders of the Nasdaq-listed Infosys Technologies, India's poster boy $4.7 billion revenues IT company, to take charge of the Unique Identification Scheme [UIS] for laying down the plans, policies and its implementing so that to all citizens get a unique identification number by  2011.

Nilekeni will obviously have to resign from the Infosys board. 

Based on the smart card format, the unique identity will include basic information like name, address, age, residence, education, annual income, etc, as well as photograph and biometric data in a digital format to make identification foolproof. The aim, says the government, is to eliminate the need for multiple identification mechanisms, prevalent across various government departments.

Clearly, the rolling out of a country-wide unique identity scheme, perhaps the first in the world, has multiple implications for India; it is a big leap in e-governance; a major boost for national security; an important administrative reform measure that will bring in transparency in governance; and a move that has the potential to eliminate wastage and leakage of official subsidies.

"This is a project that has significant transformational capabilities. It will allow us to channelize all subsidies through the cards; it can promote financial inclusion; and it can help us provide social security," said Nilekeni in a public response to his appointment.

But above all, it throws up multi-billion dollar business opportunities for not only the domestic technology sector, but also the global technology companies who can look forward to gaining a huge and new market at a time when most top markets in the developed world are under recession.

After all, a billion smart cards for a billion people would require a vast eco-system encompassing data collection, delivery channels, chip designing, smart card manufacturers, application and software providers, system integrators, networking analysts and print companies.

Back of the napkin calculations indicate that the project will create at least a 100,000 additional jobs the next two years, while the entire project would require at least $30 billion to roll out fully.

According to the local IT industry, after having been badly hit by the global meltdown, many tech leaders have been urging the government to accelerate the country's e-governance,and this project was the quick response to that call.

Equally important is the fact that the current Congress-led UPA government has leveraged its blockbuster win in the May general election to bring in some sweeping changes in the Indian administrative process.

The plan to provide a unique identification number has been brewing for a while. It was conceived in 2002 during the BJP Party-led National Democratic Alliance regime under the aegis of Multipurpose National ID Card program. The main aim then was to provide a unique identity to Indian citizens to check illegal immigration from neighboring countries. But fearing that such a move would severely deplete BJP's popularity, it was shot down soon after.

The next Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance government revived the idea in 2004 to primarily make a difference in its administrative process; it re-introduced the plan with the key objectives of reducing leakage in the government's various welfare programs by assigning a unique identification number to the intended beneficiaries.

For the next few years this plan circulated between various departments like the home ministry, finance ministry and rural development ministry and the registrar general of Census of India until the UPA government, in November 2008, established a Unique Identity Authority under the Planning Commission.

The authority's mandate was to implement the unique identification system for a variety of purposes, including better targeting of government's development schemes such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, regulatory and security purposes, and banking and financial sector activities.

In April this year, the government also gave this project its first serious push by allocating $20 million in seed money.

"It is a transformational project for the country," said Som Mittal, president of local IT lobby, The National Association of Software Services Company, popularly known as NASSCOM. "I see this overlaying many underlying projects, creating huge efficiencies for the country leading to enhanced governance and reduced costs."

Nevertheless, this plan is not without concerns. And the biggest downside is that it is based on smart card concept and whether or not the UIDA will have the administrative capability to verify the authenticity of the information provided by the citizens, is a big question mark. After all, the country has already seen a major failure of a similar plan in the past when a smart card-based project to provide cheap food grains to the rural poor could not get off the ground because few revealed their actual financial status.

Mention online social network and the first thing that comes to mind is that it's a great tool for connecting with family, friends, colleagues and even potential customers. Social networking makes it so easy to stay in touch with large groups of people that are spread out across great distances that there is a constant effort to find new ways of utilizing its power.

However, while companies and businesses have found some ways of using social media beyond just social networking, for local governments it has remained just that; social media. Barring a few leading examples such as San Francisco connecting its 311 service with Tweeter, it appears that most local governments in US are still looking for ways to use social media effectively.

Here's one new trend though regarding the use social media by the corporate world that perhaps local governments can emulate now - recruitment and hiring. After all, getting right IT candidates has always been a task for local governments given the comparative low pay they offer vis-a-vis the corporate sector.

A recent study by a New Jersey-based search engine and social media marketing consultancy and services firm Jump Start Media has revealed that increasingly, hiring managers are turning to -- and even depending on -- social media sites for identifying and researching job candidates for meeting their hiring needs.

After some extensive polling -- that included 100 hiring managers at small, mid-sized and large companies -- on how social media is being used in the hiring process, Jump Start found that a good number of the hiring managers have started checking social media sites to research candidates before making a job offer. While LinkedIn-the only professional social networking sites to research the credentials of job candidates, is the favorite for three quarters of those polled, a good 48% turn to Facebook and 26% to Twitter.

According to Veronica Fielding, CEO of Jump Start, although on the most basic level, social media is still being used for social networks, that social media connects large groups of people is making it a powerful tool for job hunting as well.

"Social media is not only a great networking tool, it is a great way to bag a new job if you use the media correctly and do the right things," she says.

One big reason why the social media has emerged as an important tool in the hiring process these days, say hiring managers, is its power to offer hiring managers the ability to gain a broad picture of an individual.

"It allows you to see the professional beyond their resume," says Rosina Racioppi, President of Women Unlimited, an organization that trains and grooms women to pursue a professional career. "Utilizing social media tools enables hiring managers to assess whether a candidate is an appropriate fit for their organization."

Fielding says since of all the popular online networking websites, LinkedIn has been the most professionally focussed; it should be the first hunting ground for hiring managers. "The easiest, safest choice is LinkedIn because it has always been a 100% professional networking media."

In yet another display of its ruthless censorship regime, as Beijing pulls a blanket over the web in China for this week's 20-year anniversary of the military crackdown in Tiananmen Square, rebels have found a new way of protesting the notorious state censorship; they have started calling the crackdown on the Internet as, "Chinese Internet Maintenance Day".

Look at what Global Voices Online, which describes itself as a global anti-censorship network of bloggers and online activists, says;

"Today, on 3rd of June, a large number of local websites, including Fanfou (Chinese version of twitter) and VeryCD (user generated resource sharing website), have put up system maintenance notices stating that the websites would be inaccessible until June 6. With all the blocking and system maintenance measures, June 4th has occupied the third most searched key term in google.cn (June 3 10:09pm), although netizens could not get much information from the result list."

Another Chinese rebel websites called Damwei has even given it sarcastic twist. In an entry under the headline "Chinese websites under maintenance", Damwei said,

"The administrators of Chinese websites are putting in a period of inaccessibility on their sites for a period of two to three days starting with the Tıаnanmen anniversary tomorrow (June 4).

Fanfou.com, China's knock-off version of Twitter.com, shows this maintenance message: "The Fanfou server is undergoing technical maintenance. Service is expected to resume before dawn on the 6th."

VeryCD.com, a user-generated service that allows users to download films, music and other material, is also under "technical repair" from June 3rd to June 6th. Dictionary Wordku.com is too, whose message thanks the support of their users, are also calling the period the "Chinese Internet Maintenance Day", probably mockingly."

Indeed Internet censorship in China is nothing new and over the years Beijing's phobia of freedom of expression over the Internet seems to have increased despite the fierce global condemnation of the country's censorship policies.

For instance China has now 60 Internet regulations, while the Middle Kingdom has over 30,000 Internet police. According to Amnesty International China "has the largest recorded number of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents in the world."

China is also infamous for its Golden Shield Project, a system -- also known as the Great Firewall of China -- that blocks content by preventing IP addresses from being routed through, and consists of standard firewalls and proxy servers at the Internet gateways.

But China's Internet censorship measures this week is perhaps one of its strictest. Beijing-the seat of Chinese administration- has not only blocked hundreds of popular local websites like wordku.com, hihicd.com, yeeyan.com, xiaonei.com (Chinese version of Facebook), tieba.baidu.com, douban.com and the likes. A blanket over global networking websites like twitter.com, blogspot.com, youtube.com, flickr.com, bing.com, and cmule.com has also been throww.

Reports suggest that the censorship has not been limited to the Internet, with some sensitive TV stations also experiencing blackouts. Besides China is turning away all Tiananmen dissidents -- who managed to flee China after June 1989 and trying to return to observe the anniversary -- at the airports. The police has also ordered house arrests on family members of many of the students massacred that day, in order to prevent them from visiting the Square.

What's worse, no one there is allowed to publicly talk or write about the date June 4, 1989.

Beijing's phobia over the anniversary observation of the Tiananmen Square massacre is not difficult to fathom. Ever since a fleet of army tanks mowed down hundreds or may be thousands of unarmed civilians on June 4, 1989, the Chinese administration has been trying hard to wipe out all memories and signs of the Chinese army's suppression of the student democratic movement.

No one knows exactly how many -- a number that Beijing has painstakingly kept under wraps -- died in that crackdown, as the administration has vehemently refused to recognize the movement as one for democracy. Instead, Beijing has always termed it "counterrevolutionary" and an attempt to overthrow the state.

Nevertheless, even as many consider China's heavy-handed censorship this week as one of the biggest violations of freedom of expression, for many software companies offering workarounds, it has been a period of brisk business.

E-mail encryption services masking identities of the sender and recipient are reportedly seeing an increase in use and so have proxy servers that enable viewing of blocked websites. Freegate, a software that specializes in moving around Chinese censor has reported a 20% increase in downloads as well.

Obama's major election promise of changes to the U.S. Tax Code that, among other things, would remove tax deductions for companies that take jobs overseas, may have many supporters among US tax payers. But India, the country that has grabbed the biggest chunk of the US's IT outsourcing pie, is strongly reacting to that proposal, and is lobbying hard in the US to convince authorities that any such protectionist move would not only have serious connotations for India, but would also mean loss of opportunities for American giants.

And playing ball with India are at least two American IT giants, Microsoft and Cisco, as well as international business strategists like Robert Kennedy of University of Michigan's Ross School of Management.

The first international push-back against this proposal has come from none other than the NASDAQ-listed Infosys, the country's poster-boy software services provider. In its annual filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Infosys said that Obama's proposal, "may adversely impact our [Infosys' and thus Indian IT industry's] ability to do business in the jurisdictions in which we operate, especially with governmental entities."

Indeed, ever since Obama made that announcement, India has been losing sleep over how that move, if enacted into a law, could impact India's money spinning outsourcing industry that earns annual revenues of about $72 billion, $47 billion of which is from exports. Of that figure, 60 percent comes from the United States.

But instead of cribbing over how that proposal if turned into a law would hit Indian IT companies, the industry has adopted a clever stance of harping on how the US giants would be hit harder than their Indian counterparts.

Thus, the argument that the industry is putting forward is that some of the biggest beneficiaries of outsourcing are not really foreign IT companies but actually US' Microsoft, HP and General Electric, to name just three.

Any hurdle created for outsourcing would result in much higher wages that would inflate their costs and thus, damage competitiveness in the long run for a few short-term benefits.

"That will hardly achieve the proposal's stated purpose," said a source from NASSCOM, the Indian IT industry's apex trade body, requesting anonymity. "And it will not be good for the US economy either."

Microsoft's, CEO, Steve Ballmer agrees. In a reaction to the Indian media on Obama's proposal Balmer said, "the [US} government will also have to be thoughtful because there are unintended consequences: will their actions create jobs in the US, or will they tend to drive even more jobs out of the US. In general, business is saying this is not a good thing."

Cisco, on the other hand is blatantly critical. Spokesman John Earnhardt (as quoted in UPI), said that "if rules are changed on tax deferral and we are taxed in the (United States) on non-U.S. profit, this significant additional U.S. tax would adversely impact our ability to invest and grow our business in the United States and to compete against our foreign competitors who are not subject to this U.S. tax."

Of course if these giants start sneezing, Indian IT companies could catch a cold too. That is because even Indian companies, both IT and some others, get a lot of business outsourced from these companies. Perhaps these companies will have to start looking at other parts of the world as well as inwards; that is developing the local markets.

But that may be good news according to Karthik Shekhar, the secretary general of Unites Professional, the fledgling but fast-growing information technology labor union in India.

"Although it is impossible to stop outsourcing no matter what hurdles is put in its way; if it saves costs, US companies would not be deterred by higher taxes. But in way the proposal could be a blessing in disguise for the Indian IT sector," he says. "The Indian IT sector depends too much on US. It is time that the industry starts looking elsewhere and develops other markets."

Meanwhile according to Robert Kennedy, even if Obama's proposed changes makes it slightly less attractive for US firms to operate abroad, and puts them at a disadvantage compared to non-US firms, tax saving is a very minor issue.

The major reasons for going offshore include, he says, labor cost savings, access to better skills, access to advanced delivery platforms, etc., and tax treatment doesn't even make to the top ten reasons.

This why, off-shoring will continue and these proposed changes will have little or no effect, says Kennedy.

Here is some good news - or at least not so bad news - and some bad news. In the last year, malicious activities over the Internet have declined in the U.S. And the country is no longer the number one destination for cyber criminals when it comes to attacking government computer networks: China's government computers are now the top focus of cyber criminals these days.

But the bad news is that in terms of general malicious activities, the U.S is still the country that generates the highest numbers of cyber crime attacks. And the nature of these attacks is shifting. Data breaches and theft is getting increasingly dangerous, especially for governmental and critical infrastructure organizations.

What's more; attackers are not only getting smarter in beating many of the sophisticated defense mechanisms, they are also diversifying their range of threat options. And in some cases, they are even expanding the reach of their operations.

These are the highlights of Symantec's Government Internet Security Threat Report just released, which said that the U.S. has not only remained the top country for overall malicious activity in 2008. It was also ranked first for a number of categories within this, including for malicious code, phishing website hosts, and originating attacks.

According to the report, attacks on government computer networks in U.S. that resulted in  compromised or stolen information increased by 40 percent from 2007 to 2008.

As in the previous year, the most common attacks targeting government organizations in 2008 continued to be denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

This is a cause for worry because it puts much of the critical infrastructure performing essential functions at risk to attackers who might choose to exploit such essential functions.

For instance a DoS attack on the transportation sector's network can siphon off funds, as well as cause large-scale disruptions in the services.

The second most common type of attack against government networks is what has been the biggest target of all criminals; Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), or emails. The report fears that criminals have acquired the ability to spoof government communications to obtain credentials to launch further attacks. Consequently, such attacks have also acquired the power to compromise the integrity of information and communications within governments.

One important and rising area of concern to governments is the increasing use (and capacity) of removable media. "Many organizations lack effective security measures to protect against such dangers," said the report.

For instance, 59 percent of employees admitted to taking company information--such as email addresses, contact information of customers, employee records, and financial records--when leaving the organization. Of those, 11 percent admitted to taking data, 53 percent downloaded information onto a CD or DVD, 42 percent took data using a USB drive, and 38 percent sent attachments to a personal email account.

Nevertheless, for attacks specifically targeting the government sector, 2008 marked the first time that the United States was not the top country of origin. Here again, the U.S. was surpassed by China, which ranked first as the source of attack with 22 percent of the attacks on the government sector. (For U.S. the figure was 12 percent).

China also had the second highest total for l worldwide malicious activity in 2008, accounting for 9 percent; this is a decrease from 11 percent in the previous reporting period.

The reason for this is simple; along with the fact that China has the most broadband subscribers in the world, the amount of time spent online by users there makes the country lucrative for malicious attacks.  "The longer a user is online, the longer the computer is exposed to malicious attack or compromise, and Internet users in China spending more of their leisure time online than users in any other country" said the report.

According to Mark Fossi, the report's author, although profit is often a motive behind the attacks targeting governments, because "governments store considerable amounts of personal identification data," political gains sometimes supersede profit as the dominant motive.

 "Government databases store information that could attract politically motivated attacks, including critical infrastructure information and other sensitive intelligence," said the report.

The report is an eye opener on a common belief that attacks on government computer networks particularly in countries such as the U.S., India and Belgium, originate, almost always, from China.

Symantec's research has revealed that attackers often attempt to obscure their tracks by redirecting attacks through one or more servers that may be located anywhere in the world. This means that the attacker may be located elsewhere than the country from where the attacks appear to originate.

Similarly, malicious activity originating in the U.S. may not necessarily mean it is initiated by attackers located in the US. "Frequently attackers will connect through multiple computers in geographically diverse locations before connecting to the computer launching the attack," says Fossi. "Because of this it's difficult to pinpoint the actual geographic location of the attackers themselves. Rather we are only able to see the computer launching the attack, hosting the phishing website, and seeing malicious code infection attempts."

Last year while discussing the first edition of the Connectivity Scorecard, which revealed how inefficiently governments around the world were using their ICT infrastructure, Professor Leonard Waverman, told me that one big reason for that was, "there isn't a CIO (Chief Information officer) at the federal level."

According to Waverman (and other experts also), while it is a fact that there are CIOs at the agency or state levels in almost all governments, almost no government has a centralized CIO. This is true across all types of economies; whether it is a developing economy or a developed one.

Having gone into the depths of Singapore's eGovernance pursuits after the country won a recent award, I can't help but appreciate the wisdom of that observation of Waverman, a professor of economics at London Business School as well as the Dean of Haskayne School of Business at Canada's  University of Calgary. He is considered as one of the most influential men in the global telecom industry.

Indeed, Singapore has demonstrated how far and fast can a country forge ahead with its eGovernance initiatives when it is led by a federal level CIO.

In the 2009 Waseda University International e-Government Ranking, announced a few weeks back, Singapore overtook United States to the top, making it the first time that an Asian country has taken pole position in the study. In third position was Sweden, followed by the United Kingdom and Japan.

The Waseda ranking covered 34 countries. The study analyzed the development of web sites and ICT at governmental level, as well as the relationship between governments and their stakeholders.

Singapore ranked within the top three for almost all the research parameters including network preparedness, the availability of user-friendly and secure electronic services, the integration of ICT to facilitate management, the quality of the national portal, and above all, how well the role of Chief Information Officer in Government is defined and developed.

"Human resource, particularly Government Chief Information Office (GCIO) leadership has been seen to be one of the key factors to the success of Singapore's e-Government," says OBI.

Singapore realized the importance of a GCIO-led e-Government way back in 1996 when it established a GCIO wing to plan and oversee the development and integration of civil service-wide IT applications. Today the country even has a whole department called Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) that acts as GCIO.

This department provides technical advice, master-planning and project management services to Ministry of Finance, which is the country's e-Government owner, and government agencies. In addition, it identifies and conceptualizes e-Government programs and projects. And finally, it drives the development and implementation of e-Government programs and projects.

Obi says that success of Singapore's GCIO-driven eGovernance initiatives is evident from the fact that almost 98 percent of the country's public services are available online  -- a feat which few countries have achieved -- with the majority of them being transactional in nature. Citizens of Singapore do almost everything online, from filing and paying their taxes, to managing their pensions and mortgages, to registering marriage, birth, and death over the Internet.

Businesses in Singapore too have full access to the Government. They can submit tenders online, renew and apply for license or permits online, as well as file patents, trademarks, etc, online.

Singapore's GCIO-led eGovernance process also makes evolution of e-Governance easy, says IDA. For instance having achieved its objectives of focusing its e-Government initiatives at the public agency level, the Government is now shifting it focus to the citizens. From merely providing services to establishing virtual spaces, IDA is now working on allowing citizens to participate in policy-making, it says.

Commenting on general e-Government trends over the past five years, Obi says that Governments have become aware that it is not enough to introduce ICT to the existing internal processes; ICT must be used together with other e-Government initiatives.

"Moreover, e-Government is becoming increasingly important in a scenario characterized by the global financial crisis, as well as growing concerns over environmental issues. ICT can be used as tools to address these issues as governments work towards a citizen-oriented state," Obi says.

French lawmakers in the National Assembly on April 9 may have defeated the bill that would have given French authorities the power to disconnect Internet connection of those who download music or copyrighted materials illegally. But authors, musicians and all other owners of Intellectual Property in France are optimistic that the illegal download bill will ultimately go through when it is presented again in the next parliament session before summer.

Sources say that given the huge interests of the music, movie and the publishing industry riding on the illegal download bill, France will ultimately have to pass the bill even if it is a watered down version of the one originally proposed.

"The French National Assembly may have defeated the bill on Thursday but the process is not finished," said a source from a powerful lobby of Intellectual Property owners pushing that bill, requesting anonymity. "We have been assured by the Government that the bill will be presented again in the parliament before summer and the present Government is also working on a revised version."

The source added that even though the bill contained some controversial and "tough measures", it was defeated more because of sparse attendance in the parliament rather than real opposition to the bill.

"The bill was defeated by 21 (against) to 15 (for), which means that there were just 40 members present that day," said the source. "Being the day before Easter most others who would have supported the bill were on a holiday."

The bill championed by the president, Nicolas Sarkozy, was supported by the influential association of authors, composers and publishers SACEM, as well as French Union of Phonographic Producers, which represents 48 French producers including giants like Universal Music and Sony BMG.

The proposed law was supposed to grant new powers to monitor Internet users and report illegal downloads to a new copyright protection agency, called HADOPI (Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Œuvres et la Protection des Droits sur Internet). HADOPI would have had the power to trace via IP (Internet protocol) address of all Internet users illegally downloading copyrighted materials. After three warnings HADOPI would have also had the power to severe the Internet connection of the offender for up to a year. Offenders nevertheless would have had to keep paying for their internet connection despite it having been cut off.

Sources say that this was the most controversial feature on the proposed law that attracted a fair amount of criticism. Civil liberties campaigners and members of the opposition Socialist party for instance said that the new surveillance powers were tantamount to "the criminalization of an entire generation".

Some also feared that the proposed law could end up punishing, for instance, parents whose children download in secret, or employers whose staff use computers at work to break the law.

"We are aware that the Government is now working on the law to smoothen out the rough edges so that it could be introduced again in the next parliament session," said the source. "While it is true that some of the measures in the proposed bill were harsh, it is also true that illegal Internet download is seriously harming the music, publishing and the movie industry."

In an internal document circulated to members consiting of over 124,000 authors, composers and publishers, to garner support for the this law, SACEM that acts as a not-for-profit company to collect royalties, rights and fees, said that despite the huige revenues generating power of the Internet, its "revenues from exploitations on the Internet or mobile phones increased only by $4.4 million, rising from $3.4 million in 2003 to $7.76 million in 2007.

But in 2008, its earning from the "Internet was next to nothing."

"Collections from multimedia, including the Internet (at $12.3 million) remain at abnormally low levels," said SACEM. It added that illegal downloads have actually resulted in a reduction of its total collection for 2008 which at $998 million represents a 0.4 percent fall over the previous year, 2007.

"Although the fall in total revenues (in 2008 compared to 2007) were minimal it is deplorable considering that the Internet is supposed to increase revenues for the Intellectual Property owners," said the source.

What's more, SACEM predicts the growing menace of illegal downloads could make its total collections fall by a further 2.8 percent in 2009.

According to SACEM then, it is urgent that France has a law that bans exploitation of Intellectual Property owners through the Internet. It argues that just like traditional distributors of audio and audiovisual content like cable operators, satellite platforms, and the likes, the Internet too should contribute to the remunerations of Intellectual Property owners.

"It is essential that the public authorities understand the disastrous financial consequences of the crisis affecting the music sector in recent years. Combining the considerable loss of revenues from the phonographic market and the constant devaluing of works on the Internet resulting from a decade of free file sharing, it has become illusory to think that rights holders will be able to straighten out this situation or benefit from appropriate remuneration in future years," SACEM said in its private document to its members.

It was just five years back, in the general elections of 2004, when Internet was used in Indian politics for the first time ever. And back then, that use was limited to things like  propaganda through text messages, emails, and the use websites for dissemination of information. But besides the usual political bickering, and the antics of the political parties, if there's one aspect that makes India's general elections 2009 different from all others, -- these start from tomorrow and go on until early May -- it is the way the Internet has moved into the mainstream of Indian political life.

Starting from a tool for an identity makeover, to mobilization of public opinion, to fund raising, and to even almost forcing democratic participation of the reluctant section of the Indian voters, the Internet-in a few short years has suddenly emerged as the most powerful tool as well as a driving force behind India's democratic politics.

Taking a cue from Barack Obama's stupendously successful strategy of using this medium to give him the winning edge, the Internet is not only at  the heart of the election strategy of almost all political parties now. Some are also using it rather innovatively to cross the online frontier to reach out to voters.

Take the instance of the website (http://www.tdpuk.com) created by the Telugu Desam Party for U.K.-based nonresident Indians. (his opposition party desperate to come back to power in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh)

On that website, not only has N. Chandrababu Naidu, the TDP chief, morphed his face into an image of Barack Obama, he has also copied Obama's tactic of using the website as a channel to garner campaign funds. For U.S.-based Indians he has even crafted a catchphrase: "Move over Bush, it is Obama's time ... it is our Babu's (short of Chandrababu) time."

If the TDP has excelled in online creativity, the leftist Communist Party of India (Marxist) is not too far behind either. This political party, which had little enthusiasm for digital technologies (since it replaces human labor) until recently. But now it has shown a clear preference for cyberspace-enabled propaganda for their election strategy of 2009.

While launching their election website for the first time ever, the CPI (M) admitted that since 54 percent of Indian voters are youths, the Internet is the best medium for reaching out to them.

"The increasing use of IT in Indian elections is changing the focus of many campaigns in India," says Ravi Singh, the CEO and co-founder of ElectionMall, the Washington, D.C.-based company that pioneered Internet-based IT applications for elections and campaigns, and was perhaps the biggest contributor to the IT-based election strategies of almost all the politicians in the last U.S. election.

According to Singh, following Obama's successful use of the Internet, the Indian political parties have woken up to the need to appeal to younger urban voters, who have a natural inclination toward new technology and its innovations. "Indian [youths] love their cell phones, which offers a great opportunity for mobile campaigning, like the sort just witnessed with Obama's successes in text messaging," says Singh.

The fear of terror attacks is playing a role as well.

Listen to what Suman R., outreach coordinator of the Janaagraha Center for Citizenship and Democracy, a Bangalore-based not-for-profit institution that started in 2001 to encourage people's participation in public governance, has to say:
 
"After the Mumbai [terror attack] incident, many are scared to participate in the political process like attending meeting and rallies, since such events are big terror threats," he says. "So, using IT makes sense because we have seen that when a political process is turned into an e-module, more people want to be a part of it."

Through a specially created website, www.jaagore.com (meaning wake up) Janaagraha is also spearheading a countrywide  political awareness campaign that urges reluctant Indians to cast their votes.

However, it is the cost effectiveness of the Internet which may be most driving the new IT political culture in the India.

"A candidate who uses IT in his/her campaign cuts down his expenses due to the ability to reach many more people efficiently," says Singh. "As a result, the candidate can spend more time with voters, and less time worrying about whether or not the potential voters can easily access information about the candidate."

"The reality," he adds, "is that voters are moving rapidly toward relying almost exclusively on the Internet for political information. If candidates do not move in the direction in which voters are moving, namely toward an increase in the use of technology, then the only one left in the dust is the candidate who does not alter his approach to better reach voters."

Ravi also predicts that it is not just India that is following the realization of the power of Internet that the US elections displayed, "More and more countries within the world are adopting this new technology for politics, and soon the standards for campaigning will begin reaching new levels. The trend we see within global democracies is a continual demand for available political tools and the proper integration of these political technologies directly into political campaign infrastructure."

Talk of a website purely for the Muslims and the first reaction is, "is it another one that rattles mostly about the Islam and spreads radical thoughts"? Click on the URL http://muxlim.com, however, and what attracts is its refreshing content. Although it only concerns Muslims, it is interesting enough not only to remove some of the misconceptions one may have had about Muslims and Islam, but also prods one to go deeper to know more about them.

Formed in 2006 in a different avatar before morphing into its present state early this year, Muxlim is the only and biggest online community on Muslims that enhances Muslim lifestyle instead of talking about purely religion or rambling politics, claims Mohamed El-Fatatry, its creator.

Muxlim's biggest contribution to the Muslim community, is that unlike all other social networking websites that provide people-centric service, it provides a content-centric services, which help in uniting the widely dispersed and fragmented Muslim population to one virtual venue.

"Most Muslim websites generally come in two types; either they are marriage websites, or those that are purely religious. There's another category though that talks only about politics. But if you are looking for a wholesome Muslim lifestyle experience that includes, Muslim fashion, Muslim music, movies, and everything that an ordinary Muslim does on a  daily basis -- which may not necessarily be related to religion but definitely based on its belief -- there's none barring Muxlim," says El-Fatatry.

Muxlim, he claims, fills the urgent need for a separate online community for Muslims, particularly against the background where in others (like You Tube Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and the likes) "there's always someone dictating what Muslim values are, and the type of content that is acceptable or not."

Muxlim on the other hand, gives power to the people; "its users decide what content should be allowed or not, while they have all the power to ensure the content is accurate and closest to Muslim values," he says.

The users in Muxlim also ensure that Muxlim has no place for sex, crime, or drug use-related content, neither is there a place for illegal content or content that spreads radicalization.

This Finland based venture, which says El-Fatatry "is growing from strength to strength", currently has over 160,000 registered users (that leapfrogged from 100,000 three months back) and already reaches several million Muslims around the world.

"Muxlim is not only a source of information about Islam but it also helps connect like-minded Muslims around the worlds," says a young student user who along with her friends prefers to log only into Muxlim instead of MySpace or Facebook. "It kind of brings the entire rationalist Muslim community in one place," she says.

El-Fatatry claims 55 percent of Muxlim users are females, which is opposite to most other online sites. "The power is truly in the community's hand while the community feels very safe and empowered by using this site," he says.

Having grown in strength the next focus of Muxlim is "to pursue more service and more features that [besides maximizing its shareholders' value] make the world a better place," says El-Fatatry.

And now, El-Fatatry aims to use Muxlim as a channel to spread global awareness about social development projects that help Muslims around the world.

The website announced this week that it was selected to be the exclusive social media partner for Gaza 100, a 100-metre relay race attempt to break the world record, which is taking place in London next month. Gaza 100 aims to set a new Guinness World Record for "the most people running 100 meters in a 24-hour relay" and is seeking 4,000 participants to take part in the run at Mile End Stadium on May 23rd and 24th

This campaign aims to raise British ₤400,000 from all the participants in the run (every participant needs to either raise or contribute ₤100) for Gaza Aid project, that Save the Children, an international social development organization is organizing to help the children of the Gaza region.

According to Dalia Association, a leading Palestinian Community Organization, "Gazans need an estimated $1.9 billion just to repair the physical damage caused by the recent war".

"The Gaza 100 aims to raise a humble sum towards this desperately needed aid, and we are delighted to be able to help them spread the word and garner additional support through our community, as part of a diverse and all-inclusive world," says El-Fatatry. "Social media in general and Muxlim in particular are very effective channels to spread global awareness about such projects. We hope to use the Muxlim community as a launch pad for wider social media activities that either attract attention to the fund raising effort, or help directly through sign-ups to the campaign."

That the Nordic countries again lead the networked readiness index ranking -- for the third time in a row -- in the World Economic Forum's  Global Technology Report 2009 released last week, is no surprise. Given their small sizes and relatively sparse population, top-notch education system, their impressive per capita income, as well as the high importance given by their Governments to adopt ICT in their general competitive agenda, it is quite natural that these countries would frequently be at top of networked readiness list.

What is surprising however, is that the biggest leap in improvement of ICT adoption and networked readiness was taken by a country which had been far lower in the previous year. According to the latest Networked Readiness Index [NRI] of the WEF as reflected in the Global Technology Report 2009, China by ranking 46th this year, leapfrogging 11 positions, thus overtaking India and the rest of the BRIC economies for the first time.

Even more impressive is the fact that in the readiness component of the NRI, the Government Readiness matrix moved up an impressive 9 places (33rd from 42) indicating that, unlike many other developing nations, the government of even a communist-led country has realized the extraordinary capacity of ICT to drive growth and innovation, and is increasing its ICT usage too to render more services and efficiency.

"Anyone who has been following China's rise in the last few years would not find it surprising that China has performed so well," says Irene Mia the co-analyst and co-author of the report who is also an economist at the World Economic Forum. "After all China is the biggest exporter of ICT products and is one of the most dynamic countries in terms of ICT use. Yet the element that is worth noting is the role of the Chinese government to use ICT and putting it at the center of its development agenda to improve its efficiency."

According to Soumitra Dutta, professor of the business and technology studies at INSEAD, France, who is the other co-author of the report, China has been investing very heavily in technology over the last several years, "and the results of that investment is coming upright now."

But although Dutta says that he expects "China to continue to rise in ranking in the next few years," there are nevertheless some weaknesses that China needs to address to make the growth of its ICT use sustainable.

For one, the sheer size of the country makes its existing ICT infrastructure insufficient to sustain a long term growth. That comes in the way of Internet, mobile telephony and PC penetration.

"But the biggest weakness of China is its regulatory environment especially with respect to its intellectual property [IP] protection," says Mia.

The Global Information Technology Report series, produced by the WEF in partnership with INSEAD annually since 2001, is one of the most significant efforts that has helped in raising awareness of the importance of ICT diffusion for overall competitiveness. The Networked Readiness Index, that WEF calculates, identifies the enabling factors that permit countries to fully benefit from ICT advances, stressing the key responsibility of all social actors --individuals, businesses, and governments.

According to WEF, NRI has not only emerged as an important tool for policymakers and even stakeholders to measure the progress of a country's ICT use and adoption, but has also been a facilitator for designing national policies and strategies that aim toward enhanced networked readiness and competitiveness.

The eighth edition of the Report covered a record 134 economies.

Besides the fact that Denmark and Sweden continue to be assessed as the world's most networked economies and along with Sweden, Finland, Iceland, the Nordic region continues to feature prominently in the NRI 2008-2009 rankings, the other siginifacnt development is that the Middle East region is also on the rise.

"This region has progressed rapidly as well due to its stellar increase in Internet penetration," says Mia, "and also the fact that in order to diversify their economy from oil and to modernize their society, the governments in these countries have put ICT at the center of their development agenda."

The other notable features in this year's ranking are the facts that Singapore (ranking 4) was the only Asian country to feature in top 10, while the United States moved up one position (to 5), confirming its pre-eminence in networked readiness in the current times of economic slowdown.

"The US has done very well," says Dutta. 'It is one of the large countries that has always been on the top. It has tremendous strength in terms of attracting talent and a great track record in start-up tech companies. And while US certainly has a challenge in the financial sector, on the whole technology is in a very strong position."