Cisco to Enable Common Service Centres to Deliver Transformational Solutions in Education and Health Care Across India

Company Collaborates With CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd. to Provide Remote Education and Health Care Services Through Common Service Centres (CSCs)

NEW DELHI, India - Cisco today signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd. CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd is a private company established to catalyze and accelerate the delivery of various eGovernance services through the CSC framework. The purpose of the MoU is to make education and health care solutions available and to promote social inclusion through CSCs across India. The MoU was signed by Shankar Aggarwal, CEO, CSC e‑Governance Services India Ltd. and Naresh Wadhwa, president and country manager, Cisco India in the presence of John Chambers, chairman and CEO, Cisco; Wim Elfrink, chief globalisation officer and executive vice president, Cisco Services; R. Chandrashekhar, secretary, Department of Information Technology, government of India; and S. R. Rao, additional secretary, Department of Information Technology.

The Common Service Centres program is a strategic cornerstone of the government of India’s National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) with 250,000 CSCs planned across 600,000 villages. The CSCs have the potential to offer Web-enabled e-governance services in rural areas as well as to provide high-quality and cost-effective video, voice and data content and services in areas such as education, health and entertainment.
Key Facts/Highlights:

* By working collaboratively toward a common vision of Smart+Connected Communities, Cisco and CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd intend to make the technology platform available to CSCs to deliver transformational education and health care solutions to citizens across India. Cisco has worked with governments and communities around the world on delivering its vision for Smart+Connected Communities and believes that the delivery of high-quality services to rural areas can help India produce more inclusive and balanced growth.
* The education services will use the Cisco® Remote Education Centre, an education platform hosted in the cloud with the ability to support 30,000 simultaneous classes. Powered by the market-leading Cisco WebExTM on-demand collaboration solution, the Remote Education Centre platform brings the teacher, along with e-content, virtually to remote classrooms. It has been successfully piloted in Chhindwara, Madhya Pradesh and other geographies.
* The health care services will be offered through the Cisco HealthPresenceTM extended reach solution, a desktop-based telemedicine solution that has immense potential in providing access to high-quality health care across India.
The HealthPresence extended reach solution can also be hosted in a cloud and support several thousand high-quality video-based telemedicine sessions simultaneously and has been successfully piloted in India, Africa, and Latin America. New delivery models for health care through the CSCs will help expand access to health care and manage access to information in a highly secure and reliable manner.
* Cisco believes that a holistic transformation of the educational system can be enabled by collaborative technologies that allow individuals to create, adapt and share content and best practices. By providing extraordinary access to
high-quality educational services through the CSCs, Cisco intends to help create a knowledge economy by imparting vocational training to rural youth and preparing students in India to become members of the global workforce.
* The Cisco Smart+Connected Communities initiative is designed to provide cities and communities with smart and connected solutions for utilities, safety and security, connected real estate, transportation, health care, learning, sports venues, and government services. By providing a network-enabled blueprint for successful ’smart’ communities of the future, Smart+Connected Communities solutions help transform physical communities into connected communities that can help realize sustainable economic growth and GDP, enable environmental sustainability through resource management and operational efficiencies, and enhance quality of life for residents.
* Transformational health care services have the potential to break the boundaries of geography and ease pressure from the increasing demand for expert services in health care systems regionally and nationally. The network as the platform allows for innovative delivery models with strong communication and collaboration capabilities bringing 21st-century education and health care services to the citizens of India.
* Cisco intends to make available education and health care services with the goal of building sustainable replicable models for the future. Cisco has worked with governments around the world to further the cause of inclusive education and health care through the use of technology.

Executive Quotes:

* John Chambers, chairman and CEO, Cisco

“Collaborative technologies, powered by ubiquitous broadband access, will not only enable access to high-quality education and health care services but also help drive the next phase of economic growth for our future. Education and health care are fundamentally collaborative, interactive endeavors, critical to the success of future generations. It’s an honor to collaborate with the Department of Information Technology and help deliver transformational education and health care services to the citizens of India. We believe communities, cities, countries and individual lives can be transformed by providing access to socially, economically and environmentally sustainable solutions.”

* Mr. R Chandrashekhar, secretary, Department of IT and Chairman, CSC
e-Governance Services India Ltd.

“I am very pleased that this innovative technology platform will bring high-quality health care and education services to villagers across India. It’s very encouraging to see how two private sector companies are collaboratively building on the government’s substantial investment in IT infrastructure and bringing services to the common man through the Common Service Centres.”

Video

* Video overview of the Chhindwara intitiative on Rural Entrepreneurship

http://www.cisco.com/web/IN/thehumannetwork/story_video8.html

Supporting Resources

* For more information on Cisco’s Smart+Connected Communities initiative visit:
http://www.cisco.com/go/smartconnectedcommunities
* For more information on India’s National E-governance plan visit:
http://www.mit.gov.in/default.aspx?id=825
* Feature story: How Cisco helped education take roots in the Indian Forests
http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2009/ts_121409.html
* Blog: Fostering e-learning with collaboration technology in rural India
http://blogs.cisco.com/news/comments/fostering_e-learning_with_collaboration_technology_in_rural_india/
* Cisco India Newsroom :
http://newsroom.cisco.com/india
* Cisco globalisation perspectives:
http://newsroom.cisco.com/globalisation
* Follow Cisco on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/CiscoSystems

About CSC eGovernance Services India Limited

CSC eGovernance Services India Limited has been incorporated to provide a range of services to support the Common Services Centre (CSC) network across the country such as back-end support for service delivery, create manage and promote a common “CSC” brand identity and assured quality of service, computer training centres, data processing centres, call centres and other ICT enabled delivery points for offering various e-services etc. The company is to catalyze and accelerate the delivery of various eGovernance services through the CSC framework by developing appropriate end-to-end technology, business and service delivery models.

About Cisco Systems

Cisco, (NASDAQ: CSCO), the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate, this year celebrates 25 years of technology innovation, operational excellence and corporate social responsibility. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com. Cisco equipment in India is supplied by Cisco Systems International BV, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cisco Systems, Inc.

# # #

Cisco, the Cisco logo, Cisco Systems, Cisco HealthPresence and Cisco WebEx are registered trademarks or trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. This document is Cisco Public Information.