By the Executive Director

As we close the first half of the current fiscal year, we observe the activities of the year beginning to peak. The activities are in fact multidimensional, as C-DAC over the years has diversified its activities transferring the expertise it acquired and technologies it developed, to develop and deploy information technology based solutions in the various sectors. This approach has enabled us to maintain a balance between developing the key technologies needed in the country for achieving self reliance on one hand, and using expertise developed to commercialise the technologies and products to address the needs in different applications on the other.

Of significant interest are the developments carried out at C-DAC in the area of Electronic Governance, e-Governance as it is popularly known. C-DAC currently finds itself considerably involved in this area, having already developed certain key applications for a few States and also transferring and developing new applications for other States as they emerge. This issue is accordingly devoted to e-Governance. It carries a lead article on Engineering e-Governance solutions and a description of C-DAC’s e-Governance forays in the various States.

We recognized e-Governance as an important area of focus as various States made their I.T. policy pronouncement, which, in many ways centered around e-Governance. Our interaction with a number of States has been very satisfying and in fact rewarding in terms of understanding their needs and structuring solutions to address some of those needs. Among the various developments carried out by C-DAC in this area, C-DAC was given the responsibility of setting up a Centre for e-Governance in the Department of Information Technology. This Centre is now operational at the Department of Information Technology Headquarters in Delhi, and showcases a number of popular applications developed in India by vendors and system integrators including C-DAC.

Our activities in another key area, viz. Multilingual Multimedia technologies continued with a focus. Once again, as in the past several years, we have another addition to our family of a large number of popular GIST products. It is ISFOC Script Manager (ISM) 2000, an improved version of an earlier ISM product with a multitude of features, which enable providing Indian languages interface for practically every other third party software package. Our contributions in this area, has continued to receive recognition from the various bodies. This time, once again, C-DAC was honoured with the PC Quest Users’ Choice Award for the fourth year in succession in 2000 for its LEAP range of products. It also received the PC World Editor’s Choice Award for the best Indian Language kit for the year 2000.

In the area of High Performance Computing System, two more prestigious installations of PARAM 10000 were made in this quarter viz. Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati. The Russian Indian Centre for Advanced Computing Research set up in Moscow in July this year has now been registered and the various developmental activities are in progress for developing important scientific applications of interest to both India and Russia. Scientists from both C-DAC and Institute for Computer Aided Design (ICAD) are being exchanged to facilitate this process. I would like to profusely thank the Department of Science & Technology of the Government of India which played a key role in establishing this Centre and providing wherewithal for various developmental activities.

With an intention to go global, C-DAC participated in SUMMIT 2000 held during September in Nepal and exhibited its various products. Also, we have signed up for development contracts with major Indian private sector and multinational companies capitalizing on our expertise in the area of hardware technologies, networking and Indian languages web based technologies. These are good products for seeding the activities for the overseas market.

C-DAC continues to attract new ventures in the area of Advanced Training. The number of authorized centres now are 85 countrywide with additions made at Ranchi, Lucknow, Vadodara, Bhubaneshwar, Delhi, Noida and Pune. I welcome our new entrants in these cities to the C-DAC family. We are now furthering these activities through distant education. You will find appreciation of this in an article on Web based learning by our member in this issue.

The work C-DAC has done in the last almost a decade, in the area of the use of Sanskrit on computers to provide us a glimpse into our treasure of knowledge residing in our Vedas and Epics, has come to a stage of providing a Digital Library package of this work to make it accessible to everyone interested. You will find more details of this work in this issue.

In the era of the dot.com revolution being witnessed the world over and fiercely in India, every IT institution is seeking to create its position of eminence to stay and excel in the field. C-DAC has similarly found a niche for itself in this revolution. As reflected in our Vision statement, we are a technology institution of repute transferring the benefits of its technological developments to society through our products and services. We have, however, to adjust ourselves structurally to respond to the requirements most effectively. This is a process that we are in. We now have with us our new Registrar, Shri Poharkar and new HRD Chief Shri Verma who are taking up their responsibility in C-DAC to contribute in this overall process of structuring. I welcome both of them to C-DAC.

( R. K. Arora )