10 ways to secure funding for your next IT project

IT has historically been perceived as a cost centre, and therefore a good place for businesses to cut. But it doesn't have to be that way.

After years of battening down the hatches, firms are willing to spend on IT again, with a recent survey by IDC finding that companies are allocating nearly half of their IT budgets to new projects. But securing funding for these projects can be an uphill struggle, so how can CIOs land the cash needed to make them happen?

Here are some techniques that can work when you're arguing the case for an IT project.

1. MAKE YOUR PITCH ABOUT THREE THINGS -- lower the risk to the business, reduce the cost to the business and improve value for the business
2. TEAM UP WITH BUSINESS LEADERS
3. MAKE THE PROJECT EASY TO DIGEST
4. USE REAL-LIFE EXAMPLES
5. ANALYTICS ARE IN
6. DON'T FALL INTO THE CHEAP-AS-CHIPS TRAP
7. MAKE IT A SELF-FUNDING PROJECT
8. EXPLAIN WHY SHADOW IT MAKES IT MORE, NOT LESS RELEVANT
9. DROP IN SOME BUZZ WORDS
10. GET THE RIGHT MEMBERS OF THE C-SUITE ON SIDE

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Boosting Innovation: Murthy’s Idea Of Funding Indian PhDs In US Is A Non-Starter

Murthy’s idea will cost Indian Government in the tune of $25 bn over five years, an investment that can be better used to set up several top-notch universities and research institutions where Indians currently working abroad can be lured back.

NR Narayana Murthy suggested that India should spend an annual $5 billion to create 10,000 PhDs in American universities with the explicit proviso that none of them will be employed in the US. They have to return home to work on innovative projects and products right here.

While prima facie this seems like a bold idea to unleash thousands of innovators in India, giving a quantum jump the creation of intellectual property, a closer examination shows that this is actually a defeatist solution. Among other things, it concludes that India cannot produce world class PhDs, that the ones produced in the US will become innovative in India merely because they did their stuff under western masters, and that all this expense is worth it for ensuring high quality PhDs.

This is a typical Indian non-solution that essentially says India can’t be reformed, and that we need ideas that bypass our institutional limitations rather than improve them. This is the kind of thinking that got us a Right to Education Act, which essentially forces the 10 percent of reasonably competent privately-run schools to provide education to the underprivileged, instead of focusing on the real issue: how to make state schools deliver by making them accountable.

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Digital Empowerment Foundation founder Osama Manzar on what he would do with a billion dollars

Each week, we (livemint,com) ask people working in the field of public policy what they would do if they were given a billion dollars to spend on projects. What policy initiatives would they fund, and how would they spend this money?

This week, we spoke to Osama Manzar, founder and director of Digital Empowerment Foundation.

If you have your own billion-dollar plan, send it to mintonsunday@livemint.com. Selected entries will be published online.

Here. Take a billion dollars. So, is that enough money to do anything substantial in public policy in India? Why or why not?

Actually, public policy does not need money. If we want any new public policy, we need sustained advocacy after having identified the public issue, and provide policy options. If there is an existing public policy that needs meticulous implementation then, yes, a financial allocation can be used to partly fund the entire implementation in a particular area or a region or a state.

Incidentally, in India, there are several public policies and they often suffer from bad planning and implementation to make an adequate impact. For example, take the case of Right To Information (RTI). It is a great public policy and it is also something extremely desired and people-driven, yet it has been suffering challenges of adequate implementation.

On the one hand, RTI hasn’t even reached the last woman in a village—beneficiaries of RTI applications is estimated at barely 8 million citizens a year. At the same time, governments and the bureaucracy have relentlessly complained about too many “undesirable RTI applications”.

Another public policy that really bothers me a lot for not having been meticulously implemented is right to education (RTE). If I have a chance to look at just one policy and one area of public good that must not be compromised, I would choose 1.4 million government schools in India and ensure they deliver what they are meant for.

Coming to what a billion dollars can do for a chosen public policy. Let me start by looking at what $1 billion means to India. A billion is a 100 crore, which is the population that is yet to be connected to the Internet. A 100 crore dollars converted into Indian currency would somewhere around Rs6,500 crore. Interestingly, if I want this money to be used for connecting the unconnected India, I will have just a dollar, or about Rs65, per person to connect them. Which is not a lot.

However, if I choose to use it for the purpose of RTE, it gives me just about Rs46,000 per school to make all the changes that is desired. So, then the issue is what can Rs46,000 do for a school in a village in India?

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The Amazing Web 2.0 Projects Book

The purpose of this booklet is to give you some practical ideas about the kinds of things you can do with Web 2.0 technology. Please note: this was not intended to be a compilation of projects using cutting edge applications. I simply invited teachers to share what they have been doing.

In many cases the projects were in their infancy. Also, almost all projects will need following up in some way. For example, what were the longer term benefits, or what exactly was meant by “amazing results”?

All the descriptions have been provided by the teachers themselves. I received quite a few submissions, via an online survey, but only a relative handful have been included here, for a variety of reasons:

• Some people asked for their projects not to be made public. I have respected that wish.

• Some projects were not viewable by the public. I have actually included some of these where the description was detailed enough to give the reader an idea of what was going on; otherwise, I couldn’t see the point.

• I have not used submissions where there were very few details and no website to check out.

• I have omitted repeated descriptions of similar projects, but have included the URLs referred to.

As you will see, I have arranged the projects according to the age range they address. However, I do think it may be worth your while looking through all of them. I, for example, found several ideas for podcasting in primary (elementary) schools from the projects listed in the higher age groups.

I hope you find the booklet useful, and I should be extremely grateful for any H Ufeedback U Hyou would like to give me (mailto:terry@ictineducation.org?subject=Feedback)

Download the book

Digital India week: IIT Bombay students showcase ten relevant projects

The Government of India launched Digital India week from 1 July. As as part of this, IIT Bombay showcased relevant projects today in an event held on their campus. The projects that were showcased included Spoken Tutorial, FOSSEE, e-Yantra, e-kalpa Virtual Labs and many more. Most of these projects are funded by National Mission on Education through ICT under the Ministry of Human Resources Development, Government of India.

More than 100 partners are celebrating Digital India Week along with IIT Bombay. We had a chance to visit IIT Bombay and get to know more about these projects.

See the full post for the projects

Ticket to the future

With huge investments across 20 cities, the metro rail is the commuting system that will define India's new urbanism. Projects in 20 cities, Rs 2 lakh crore in committed investments, Rs. 2 lakh crore in the pipeline. Clearly, India’s urbanism is riding into a metro rail future, although gaps remain in making city transport systems ‘smart’.

Ticket to the future
A congestion charge or even a charge on fuel in the 64 chosen Indian cities could fund metro and other transport projects efficiently.

Impact of public transport on Delhi
One of the major reasons for the fall in road accidents in the last decade coincides with the metro gradually becoming the principal artery of public transport.

Missing the deadline
Slated to have been up and running in 2015, Chennai’s metro is still work in progress.

Derailed in Mumbai
Mumbai's tryst with the metro rail so far has been unimpressive and sluggish.

Read the feature in The Hindu dt. 29th Mar 2015

10 open source projects that are leading innovation

Technology depends upon Innovation. Without boundary-pushing ideas, technology (and those who depend upon it) would get nowhere. Innovation also drives businesses and society. Many people assume that most innovation is derived from closed source software and developers. That assumption is, in many instances, very wrong.

There are thousands upon thousands of open source projects that bring about innovation. Some do so on a small scale, while others are thinking massive and global. Of the hundreds of thousands of open source projects out there, the author of this post, Jack Wallen, has come up with a list of following 10 that are leading innovation in the world of technology.

1: OpenNebula
2: Ubuntu Unity
3: OpenClinica
4: OpenStack
5: Kitware
6: OpenDaylight
7: ForgeRock
8: Facebook Open Compute
9: Hadoop
10: Android

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What Is Crowdfunding And How Does It Benefit The Economy

With the passing of President Obama’s JOBS Act this past April, the word of the day seems to be crowdfunding. While this concept has arguably been around for centuries, it is still formally recognized as a new industry to many consumers, particularly those outside the United States.

Crowdfunding is by definition, “the practice of funding a project or venture by raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the Internet.” Check out this video to get a clearer idea of the step by step process of crowdfunding.

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Series of Articles on the "Risks Faced by Innovation Projects"

Every innovation project starts from an idea or a problem and mostly, all innovation teams do jump immediately to the feasibility study and scenario analysis dedicating little or no time to the assessment of the risks of innovation projects. This series of article represents an extended dashboard of internal, external and hidden risks of such projects in aiding innovation teams throughout their risk management activities. The first article looks deeper into what drives a successful innovation eco-system.

Part 1: What drives a Successful Innovation Eco-System
Part 2: Internal and Hidden Risks of Innovation Projects
Part 3: External Risks of Innovation Projects
Part 4: Risks of Incremental, Differential, Radical, and Breakthrough Innovation Project
Part 5: Cooperation and IP Risks of Innovation Projects

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ThinkQuest -- Projects -- Competitions -- Professional Development

ThinkQuest is an online learning platform that helps students develop important 21st century skills, including communication, critical thinking, and technology skills. It includes:

-- ThinkQuest Projects: A project environment that supports collaborative learning

-- ThinkQuest Competition: Technology competitions that challenge students to solve real-world problems

-- ThinkQuest Library: The world's largest online repository of student-developed learning projects, visited by millions of web learners each month

-- ThinkQuest Professional Development: Professional development for educators

The Oracle Education Foundation (OEF) provides ThinkQuest as a free service to K-12 schools globally.

Over 8,000 websites created by students around the world who have participated in a ThinkQuest Competition.

Visit the Library