My fortnightly column A Dose of IT on World Health Day-Combating Drug Resistance Kapil Khandelwal QuoteUnquote with KK www.kapilkhandelwal.com

1. c m y k c m y k
New Google
CEO Larry
Page
reshuffles
exec team. Technomics
Infosys, Mah
Satyam among
the four
shortlisted for
Irda IT project.
RIL may stop
supply to non-
priority sector to
meet government
order.
DDCC 13Bengaluru ● Monday ● 11 April 2011
IT firms get new mantra: Gender
rebalancing in the workplaceSANGEETHA CHENGAPPA
DC | BENGALURU
April 10: Although women
constitute 30-35 per cent of
the total engineering talent
pool graduating every year,
their representation in the IT
workforce still hovers
between 16-22 per cent and
in many instances, even
lower than that. All that is
about to change as IT firms
launch a spate of ‘women
only’ recruitment drives that
hold the promise of support-
ing them with flexible work
hours, mentoring, leader-
ship development pro-
grammes, daycare facilities,
maternity returnees pro-
gramme, adoption leave and
the opportunity to be part of
an exclusive women’s net-
working club.
While some IT firms have
resorted to catchy print
advertising to attract specif-
ic profiles of women, others
have launched employee
referral programmes and
enlisted HR consultants to
bring in the Eves. HCL
Technologies, a $5.5 billion
enterprise hosted a ‘women
only’ recruitment event over
the weekend in Bengaluru,
Chennai, Hyderabad and
New Delhi. The event which
will be hosted in a central
location to make it easy for
candidates to commute, is
targeted at hiring 1,000 plus
women for entry level to
middle management posi-
tions in the technical and
non-technical streams.
“Rebalancing the work-
place with more women is a
part of our diversity and
inclusion programme initi-
ated in 2006. However, this
is our first attempt to target
women only. Our learnings
from this attempt will help
us in women-focused, hiring
efforts in future” said Sri-
mathi Shivashankar Associ-
ate Vice President – Diversi-
ty & Sustainability, HCL
Technologies. At present,
women constitute 24 per
cent of our workforce, we
would like to increase that to
35 per cent to reflect the
available talent pool of
women engineers in the
country” she said.
HCL laid out the red carpet
treatment for candidates
who walked in for the event
- allocating a separate area
and refreshments for those
who accompany the candi-
dates to the interview. The
candidates were interviewed
by a panel dominated by
women to help increase
their comfort levels. The
recruitment cycle culminat-
ed with lunch for all.
IT, BPO and outsourcing
services firm, MphasiS
completed 8 recruitment
events to induct women over
the last 12 months. Explain-
ing why the firm has
launched a dedicated drive
to recruit women, Elango R,
Head of HR said “When we
are faced with a supply
crunch, we have to start
looking at various ways to
deal with it. We found that
not enough women were
being channeled into the
pipeline and decided to
launch a women-specific
recruitment drive through
referrals, HR consultants
and advertisements. Second,
as organizations mature,
there is an increasing need
for diversity in the work-
force without which there is
no diversity in thinking or
viewpoints,” he noted. How-
ever, women are hired pure-
ly on merit, and not because
they belong to the fairer sex.
Once hired, we support
them with women-friendly
policies in the workplace,
where the managers are
trained to handle issues of a
diverse workforce, he
added. Today, women con-
stitute 27 per cent of the
firm’s 38,000 employees
and Elango aims to increase
the number of women in
middle management from
18 to 33 per cent, because it
is typically difficult to retain
women at those levels.
“A firm’s ability to inno-
vate depends on its diversity
quotient, which includes
gender, multi-generational
workforce, and people with
disabilities. We recognize
the fact that hiring women
brings in significant busi-
ness value to the company –
it promotes diversity in
thinking and ideas which are
required to come up with
innovative solutions for
global customers” said
Mahalingam C, Executive
VP & HR Head, Symphony
Services. The firm has 29
per cent women on its team
and is targeting to take it to
40 per cent. Accenture
India, another equal oppor-
tunity employer has over
50,000 employees, 30 per
cent of whom are women.
While most IT firms have
no problems attracting 30-
48 per cent women at the
entry levels, that percentage
dwindles to the low teens
and tapers down to barely 3-
4 per cent at the top manage-
ment levels. Yahoo! India
R&D is working toward cre-
ating a more balanced work-
force by aiming to increase
its women headcount from a
low 16 per cent with a
‘Women in Technology’
programme – that helps
them succeed in their
careers with mentorship,
inspiration and technology
training.
Google’s
$700 m ITA
buy cleared
Washinton: Google’s entry
into the online travel sector
was cleared for takeoff Fri-
day as the US Justice
Department gave the green
light to its $700 million
purchase of flight data
company ITA Software.
The Justice Department’s
anti-trust division, however,
extracted a number of con-
cessions from Google and
imposed conditions on the
Internet search giant to
allow the controversial
acquisition to go ahead.
The proposed legal settle-
ment, which will need the
approval of a US District
Court, requires Google to
notably develop and license
ITA’s travel software to
other companies.
Several online travel sites,
including Expedia, Kayak
and Travelocity, had sought
to block the Google-ITA
deal, claiming it would give
Google too much control
over the lucrative online
travel market and lead to
higher prices.
The Justice Department
agreed that unless modi-
fied, the acquisition "would
have substantially lessened
competition among
providers of comparative
flight search websites in the
US." ITA flight data soft-
ware is used by many US
airlines and a number of
leading online travel sites.
Russia denies
plans to ban
Gmail
Moscow: The Russian
security service denied Sat-
urday it had plans to ban
Skype and Gmail after one
of its top officials said such
services posed a serious
security risk. The informa-
tion and special communi-
cations director of the Fed-
eral Security Service (FSB)
told a cabinet meeting that
he was growing “increas-
ingly concerned” by the use
of services with foreign-
made encryption technolo-
gy.
The comments sparked an
immediate furor in the
Russian Internet communi-
ty and were dismissed as a
“personal opinion” by a
source close to President
Dmitry Medvedev — a
tech-savvy leader who is
often seen with an iPad in
hand.
An FSB spokesman said
Saturday that the agency
was not proposing a ban on
the popular services.
“Quite the contrary — the
development of advanced
technology is a natural
process that should be wel-
comed,” the security serv-
ice spokesman told Russian
news agencies.
A spokesman for former
FSB chief Vladmir Putin
called the ban suggestion
“well-reasoned”.
Naming that star? Ask your telescope
New York, April 10: Long-
time stargazers learned the
basics of the night sky the
hard way — with pencils,
star charts and lots of
patience with their tele-
scopes.
Now high-tech equipment
and smartphone apps are
making the task a lot less
daunting for beginners.
New point-and-shoot tele-
scopes, for example, require
only the push of a button to
go into action: Plunk one
down in the driveway and
the device gets its own bear-
ings, aligning itself with the
stars above so it can tell you
that the twinkling light in
the eyepiece is Betelgeuse.
Three models of these
new, self-aligning tele-
scopes, costing about $700
to $800, will be offered this
July by Celestron. The com-
pany's new line, called
SkyProdigy, is intended for
amateurs who don't have in-
depth knowledge of the
night sky, or may not even
have a clue of how to set up
a telescope, said Danyal J.
Medley, a principal engineer
at the company in Torrance,
Calif.
Even seasoned astronomy
experts are heralding such
automation.
"I think the telescope that
sets itself up, so anyone can
easily use it, is great," said
Jay Pasachoff, chairman of
the astronomy department
and director of the Hopkins
Observatory at Williams
College in Williamstown,
Mass. "This kind of tele-
scope makes it possible for
people to be out in their
backyards and look at the
most interesting astronomi-
cal objects within minutes."
To find its position and
then recognise the stars
above, the telescope has a
digital camera that takes
pictures of the sky. It then
compares them with its
computerized database of
stored images, Mr. Medley
said. The process typically
takes less than three min-
utes.
Automated telescopes that
can find celestial objects
with no help from humans
are not new. Telescopes
have long had motors to
drive them, allowing built-in
processing and databases.
Users of some older tele-
scopes, for example, can
choose "Saturn" from the
menu on the hand controller,
recentering the eyepiece
over the planet.
Amateur stargazers are
also finding a wealth of data
via low-cost technology like
smartphone apps. Smart-
phones, with their cameras
and abundant processing
power, offer novel features
that telescopes cannot.
For example, United Soft
Media offers the app Red-
shift for iPhone and iPad
($11.99 at iTunes) that iden-
tifies bright stars or planets
you can see in the night sky.
It can also simulate a ride on
a spacecraft taking you on a
tour of distant planets.
Last year, the App Smart
column of The New York
Times reviewed several
other astronomy-related
apps including Star Walk
($3 for the iPhone; $5 for
the iPad) and Google Sky
Map for Android phones
(free).
Smartphone apps and
accessories for stargazing
are so popular that they will
have a separate block of
vendors at the Northeast
Astronomy Forum and Tele-
scope Show, to be held April
16 and 17 in Suffern, N.Y.
KAPIL
KHANDELWAL
W
orld
Healt
h
Day on 7th April high-
lighted a very unusual situ-
ation facing the World
Health Order. How do we
combat drug resistance
that occurs when microor-
ganisms such as bacteria,
viruses, fungi and para-
sites change
in ways that render the
medications used to cure
the infections they cause
ineffective. When the
microorganisms become
resistant to most antimi-
crobials they are often
referred to as “superbugs”.
India is at a brink as there a
major concern because a
drug-resistant infections of
malaria, TB, HIV may kill,
can spread to others, and
imposes huge costs to
individuals and society.
Last year, in my column
on “superbug” bugs our
healthcare, I had highlight-
ed the issues western
world researchers may
play with an emerging sci-
entific and medical super
power like India. However,
WHO’s call for action on
drug resistance superbugs
is to avert future global
disaster, the challenge is
what to do and how to do
it.
Despite the mass of liter-
ature on drug resistance
superbugs, there is
depressingly little on the
true costs of resistance and
the effectiveness of medi-
cines. Given the lack of
data, in the face of a grow-
ing realisation that actions
need to be taken now, to
combat a global menace
that can take the world
health order back to the
pre-antibiotics era. We are
talking of a potential bio-
logical World War III!
WHO’s Armageddonis a
6-points strategy to tide
over the biological World
War III and announce the
world’s victory over the
superbugs that kill over
60% of people who
acquire these infections
from the superbugs. These
include planning the fund-
ing for the global world
war on the superbugs,
strengthening surveil-
lance, ensuring medical
reinforcements to combat
superbugs attack,
armistice on the blatant
abuse of antibiotics by
medical practitioners and
care givers, enhancing the
commando’s for infection
prevention and control and
finally fostering the
NATO-like alliance
between the scientific,
philanthropic and health
industry to foster innova-
tions and R&D to produce
new stealth-bombing
antibiotics against the
superbugs.
The current issue is lack
of data that can really
describe the size and the
nature of the enemy we are
combatting. Information,
communications and tech-
nology (ICT) can bridge
the gaps in this war against
the superbugs. Many chal-
lenges exist to effectively
meeting these critical
information needs. Firstly,
how do we get the clini-
cians who are often
unaware of the existence
of relevant information
resources aligned with
ICT technologies. Second-
ly, the ICT systems need to
be comprehensive in their
coverage. Thirdly, issues
of time efficiency, accessi-
bility at point of care, and
automatic provision of
information for decisions
and analytics.
Fourth, customisability
to account for local factors
because of significant
local variations in super-
bugs susceptibility. Next is
the issue of ease of updat-
ing content and notifying
the users in the WHO,
governments, regulatory
bodies, doctors and care
givers. Last but not the
least the cost of such ICT
systems. We have learnt
lessons from the western
and advanced nations on
how their different ICT
systems do not sync lead-
ing to expensive solutions
in integrations and data
standards. Open source is
the way to go in combating
this war rather than open-
ing another war in the ICT
front. Finally, one major
force that needs to be
included is the growing
influence of social media
in combatting the super-
bugs when putting out the
implementation guide-
lines.
We have some lessons
from the way global clini-
cal trials have been con-
ducted and the information
collected from different
sites for regulatory sub-
missions. There are several
open source bio surveil-
lance, clinical trials sys-
tems that have worked per-
fectly. We need to stick to
the best in the open source
world to ensure that there
is co-operation and data
exchange to win this bio-
logical world war against
the superbugs that may
change the world health
order and take us to the
pre-antibiotics era.
ConsumerScope
Kapil Khandelwal is Director, EquNev Capital, a
niche investments banking and advisory services
firm and a leading healthcare and information
com-munication technology (ICT) expert.
Fight superbugs
with Open Source
US trains activists in Web protection
Washington, April 10: The
United States is training
thousands of cell phone and
Internet pro-democracy
campaigners worldwide to
evade security forces in
what it calls a "cat-and-
mouse game" with authori-
tarian governments.
The US government is
sponsoring efforts to help
activists in Arab and other
countries gain access to
technology that circumvents
government firewalls,
secures telephone text and
voice messages, and pre-
vents attacks on websites.
"This is sort of a cat-and-
mouse game and govern-
ments are constantly devel-
oping new techniques to go
after critics, to go after dis-
senters," said Michael Pos-
ner, the assistant US secre-
tary of state for human
rights and labor.
"We are trying to stay
ahead of the curve and try-
ing to basically provide both
technology, training, and
diplomatic support to allow
people to freely express
their views."
Posner told a small group
of reporters that the theme
of Internet freedom will be
"peppered" throughout the
State Department's annual
report on human rights for
194 countries that is sched-
uled for release on Friday.
US Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton is campaign-
ing hard for freedoms of
expression, assembly and
association online -- what
she calls the world's town
square or coffee house of the
21st century.
The chief US diplomat has
said the protests in Egypt
and Iran fueled by Face-
book, Twitter and YouTube
reflected "the power of con-
nection technologies as an
accelerant of political,
social and economic
change."
The US government, Pos-
ner said, has budgeted $50
million in the last two years
to develop new technologies
to help activists protect
themselves from arrest and
prosecution by authoritarian
governments.
And it has organized train-
ing sessions for 5,000
activists in different parts of
the world.
A session held in the Mid-
dle East about six weeks ago
gathered activists from
Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and
Lebanon who returned to
their countries with the aim
of training their colleagues
there. "They went back and
there's a ripple effect," Pos-
ner said.
State Department officials
said one of the new tech-
nologies under development
is the "panic button," which
allows activists to erase con-
tact lists on their cell phones
if they are arrested.
"If you can get the panic
button that wipes that (list)
clean before they get locked
up, you're saving lives," said
Posner.
The new technology has
not yet been made available
to pro-democracy cam-
paigners but it will prove
useful in places like Syria,
where the authorities simply
go out and arrest activists
who use their mobile
phones.
The State Department said
it has already funded efforts
by private firms, mainly
from the United States, to
develop a dozen different
technologies to circumvent
government censorship fire-
walls. "One of them has
been very successful in Iran.
It's being used extensively.
and we have the download
numbers," a State Depart-
ment official said on condi-
tion of anonymity.
The State Department is
also funding efforts to pre-
vent governments from
launching attacks.
bITs
DIGITAL TROOPERS
Celebrity tracker app for
Android smartphones
San Francisco, April 10:
Startup Scoopler was invit-
ing owners of Android-pow-
ered smartphones to install
an application that promises
to alert them every time a
celebrity is sighted nearby.
The free JustSpotted soft-
ware was available online at
the Android Market.
“There is no other applica-
tion that gives you real-time
alerts like this with thou-
sands of spottings on our
website every
day,”Scoopler
co-founder
AJ
Asver told AFP in an email.
“If you are in a metropoli-
tan area, you are going to be
pleasantly surprised by how
close you are to the celebri-
ty world.”
JustSpotted.com launched
in October with an online
map that pinpoints celebrity
whereabouts in real time
based on public updates
from social networking star
Facebook and microblog-
ging service
Twitter.
JustSpotted members also
contribute sightings.
While branded by some as
a potential resource for
stalkers, JustSpotted billed
itself as "celebrity friendly"
and said stars can make
deals to use the service to
promote their images or
messages.
“We have not had any
complaints from celebri-
ties,” Asver told AFP.
“We’ve actually been
approached by people about
promoting upcoming
films.” He said that a ver-
sion of JustSpotted
tailored for
iPhones was
undergoing an
Apple
approval
process and
was expected to
be available in the
App Store by the
end of the month.