World's Better Half

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 or the CAA is the 6th Amendment to the Indian Citizenship Act, 1955. It was passed by the Parliament of India on 11th December 2019 and provided a path to Indian citizenship for people of 6 faiths, namely Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians, if it could be established that they had fled religious persecution in 3 countries, namely Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. The Act is widely seen to be constitutionally problematic, discriminatory and at odds with India’s human rights obligations by large sections of the Indian Citizenry, Indian diaspora, The United Nations and governments of progressive democracies around the world for the following reasons: 1. The CAA makes religion a criterion for obtaining Indian citizenship. This is unprecedented. In addition to being in contravention to India’s secular foundations and its international human rights obligations, this also sets a legal precedent that can be carried across to many ...

January 2018, at the First National Enterprise Architecture (NEA) Conference, his Excellency Eng. Abdullah Al-Swaha, set the broad mandate of NEA  “To reinforce the concept of Enterprise Architecture, and the importance of its adoption in the sector for accelerating the digital transformation of government entities, raising the Kingdom’s ranking in the UN e-Government Development Index and realizing Saudi Arabia’s Vision of 2030” Since the establishment of NEA for Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it has been an un-written prime directive to accelerate, facilitate and enable the advancement and progress of this dynamic and ever evolving great nation. NEA offers its capability and expertise in visualizing whole of government, and then being able to plan, analyze, optimize and govern the nation’s ICT in realizing the vision of 2030. NEA Journey Marsad NEA rolled out the world’s first whole of government service repository called Marsad. The application...

Economists speak of supply and demand, scarcity of resources etc. In this grand scheme of things, the overarching influence of capitalistic tendencies, an individual is more often than not a means to an end. Then there is the constant effort from people who tries to earn a decent living, improve living standards etc. And on top of it all, the altruistic heart that wants to contribute towards society and give something back. Any effort required is constrained by time and energy. One of the smart ways of dealing with this limited capacity, is use of scheduling techniques like KANBAN. Kanban (看板?) (literally signboard or billboard in Japanese) is a scheduling system for lean manufacturing and just-in-time manufacturing.Kanban is an inventory-control system to control the supply chain. Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer at Toyota, developed kanban to improve manufacturing efficiency. Kanban is one method to achieve JIT The book by the same name authored by David J Anderson,...

Finished reading this book, The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of Mass Unemployment by Martin Ford, the conclusion leaves the reader with many take away's. Hence this write up is going to be, a synergy of what comes from the book as well as thoughts on the topic from learning of the past.  The different facets of the book including the Moores law that predicts the doubling of processing, the instance of automation and self learning algorithms, of the influence of capital on labor, the impact of automation on the middle classes, the manual laborers, the possible scarcity of disposable income and hence how demand would impact profits/loss, to name a few. The case of a fully automated sushi shop, where automation replaces the cook, the waiter, etc. leaves a vivid image about the possibilities of automation. The algorithm that can write sports narrative as good as any sports writer capturing the nuances of sports reporting. IBM computer Watson beating Jeopar...

The book, The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of Mass Unemployment by Martin Ford is an interesting read. Hinged around the Moores law that predicts the doubling of processing power every year, and compares growth in automation that has happened in the past to the events in the present and a possible near future. And No! its not a work of fiction. The book takes a look at impact of processing power and innovation around it in varying layers, of economy, labor market, education. The automation has indeed replaced jobs in certain sectors, given example and implications of each. A the book keeps saying automation is going to replace humans in many fields and the readers mind keeps debating it, arguing as the book itself says "No robots cant replace humans...period". As I keep reading the zone of that wishful thinking begin to shrink gradually, but not yet entirely given up on the debate, i find my self reading on and debating on. I haven't finished th...

It was couple of months back, having crossed 40 years ( and all..), was seriously thinking of shutting down the blog, not finding time to sit down and write a few words, thinking and trying to make a better life, considering here and here after... Should i keep adding the insignificant side notes into the chaotic world of the internet, there is a famous hadith , "intention of the believer is better(or counts more) than his deeds". This is one small service to share something that at least some one can use. Our intention is always in the best interest of the world, but our services may in the end benefit perhaps just one or none. Yet we keep up the performance, keep serving, in hope of better world and a better hereafter. But .... every one needs a bit of motivation to keep things going ... not sure if google analytic got the numbers wrong... Am grateful, its only what our kind creator has willed, am grateful for every one who spend at least few minutes of their pre...

Who doesn't know Nora right ? the light ... We'(at National Enterprise Architecture ) has been working on this Enterprise Architecture (EA) Methodology since a year (ish) , tailored for government agencies. [Well this is the previous version] Why ? why cant you just use Togaf ? why re-invent the wheel ? etc etc. Okay i get the concern, i can see that Togaf is a rich framework, especially its ADM is quite solid, but Togaf is mainly targeted at private entities, and has more of a technology favor, and unfortunately that is not what we really want, the government has different priorities different goals and thus see things differently.. This explains the advent of FEAF, DODAF, TEAF and other EA framework, each with its own merit. But as the famous saying goes, "One Size doesnt fit all" The methodology we have built is for the government, to enhance and improve the way eGovernment is accomplished. So we fondly call the methodology NORA, and details ...