Chief of Technology, Passport Seva Programme, Ministry of External Affairs, Golok Kumar Simli talks to Vishwas Dass of Express Computer, and shares his views on how small, mid size and big organisations can make themselves future-ready and intensify their battle against the global pandemic. Simli says Covid-19 disruption has left unprepared businesses at their low which has resulted into heavy data losses, security breaches, network outages and performance issues. Excerpts:
At a time when the coronavirus pandemic has taken the world into its grip, how can organisations make themselves digital-ready during the pandemic?
We are witnessing an era where the sudden unfolding of the Covid-19 pandemic has put a break on our daily lives, impacting global economy, businesses and sectors like, healthcare, and education and almost every sector to count for. World over and in India too, while countable percentage of businesses, be it public and private sectors were still evaluating their digital journey and digital-connect readiness, this global pandemic has forced everyone of us to ramp up the digital strategy and digital transformation journey. It has actually become a necessity to deal with not only with the current problem but be ready to handle any such situation in the near future.
Please shed some light on the role of the technology to fight against Covid-19. What is your suggestion to organisations to become technology-ready amidst the pandemic?
Technology is becoming one of the saviours and sustainable tool which is helping us to continue businesses at maximum though may not be as usual. What we are also witnessing that the most affected among them are small and mid size businesses. Some global data and reports suggest us that almost 45-50 per cent of small and mid size businesses would hardly ever recover such losses and may be even the large enterprises would also be vulnerable to this disruption unless they get themselves ready at the earliest. This disruption has also left the unprepared businesses at their low, resulting into heavy data losses, security breaches, network outages and performance issues among many others. To deal with such sudden emergence of global pandemic, I feel that we can use this as an opportunity to learn and prepare ourselves for the future. While we are dealing with such situations, some of the important aspects which come to my mind for a technology ready future include the required technology infrastructure and platforms to deal with businesses during pandemic which is adaptive, agile and secure. The second thing which is important to understand is the workforce and right organisational culture that one needs to develop that can be aligned with new business models and culture. The third one include preparation for sustainable business model and business continuity plan with greater degree of clarity and decision making capability, involving thetop management’s willingness to adopt and provide all sort of support at an organisational scale. The fourth thing is that we also need to identify critical business functions, critical services, sovereign and non-sovereign data and adopt a compatible and modular approach to business continuity. We need to create visibility and transparency across all levels of the enterprise architecture, involving employees, stakeholders, beneficiaries and decision makers as a whole.
How exactly various organisations can utilise the lockdown to scale up their safeguards and businesses?
I feel that this is the apt time we need to innovate, adopt and identify lot of new business opportunities between the customer and supplier, between the government and the citizens, between the government and the industries and these new opportunities have to be given a shape to tackle such situation. While we are dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, where you are restricted to a one place, how do you access your corporate network, corporate data centre, applications and to do that the kind of remote access infrastructure, one should be preparing and that should be capable of supporting the load of entire workforce with same degree of efficiency, seamlessness and security. The current time requires us to prepare a disaster management team and strategic control team. Most of the time people feel that the disaster management and business continuity teams should be consisting of IT personnel only, which is a wrong thing to assume. Rather, the team should be consisting of personnel from IT, line of business unit, HR, finance and legal. The technology preparedness at this level would really help to battle against the pandemic situation like this.
About Golok Kumar Simli
Simli is an award winning technology leader whose contribution towards National eGovernance Plan of India during its inception in the year 2006-07 was noteworthy. His effort to digital transformation within public sectors has been immense. He has written many articles on use of ICT in Government Service Delivery Transformation and spoken at various national and international seminars on Digital Transformation. He has helped in steering and ensuring smooth delivery of passport services at the doorstep of the citizen in India, one of India’s most successful eGovernace project. He has been also guiding and contributing to use of emerging technologies in the public sector. His keen areas of interest are cloud, BigData, analytics, AI and RPA. He has architected and implemented Cyber Security and Data and Information Security framework for the enterprise and Government sectors. Currently, Simli is serving as the Chief of Technology for Passport Seva Programme in the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. He carried a wide range of experience exceeding 25 years in ICT, starting with Private Sector, Public Sector Undertaking, Reserve Bank of India and more than 14 years with the Government Ministry/Department.