Introduction

The Tata Energy Researh Institute (TERI) and National Information System for Science & Technology (NISSAT) organised a two-day workshop on designing a successful web site and publishing on the web in TERI's premises at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi during 19-20 March 1998.

Inauguration

Dr RK Pachauri, Director, TERI, while welcoming the participants discussed the new information technology (IT) which can alter our lives in ways that we cannot even imagine at this time as the potential for transfer of information is absolutely awesome. There is also scope for certain harmful impacts and effects and we need to reflect on this. The importance of knowledge and information transfer lies in the fact that an organization can develop a Home Page, for instance, and this is transmitted thousands of miles within the blinking of an eyelid and makes it possible for the organisation to reach out and communicate from one point of the globe to another in a manner that perhaps will make a lot of difference to the performance of each task on a day to day basis.

One of Mr Rajiv Gandhi's major contributions as Prime Minister was the ushering in of the computerization. At that point of time, there was a lot of criticism. But the manner in which the architecture of a government office has changed over a period of time is something to be taken notice of. It is vitally important for people at the top to understand the potential, the possibilities, and the immense power of new information technology. The importance of organizing workshops at the senior level, let us say at the level of chief executives and heads of department needs to be explored. During the course of their work, most professionals may need to seek the support, encouragement, and inspiration from those who are at the top of their organizations and it is for this reason that there is a need to reach out to every level of the organization to see how one can infiltrate the very thinking of an organization at every level and bring into existence the complete awareness of the power and potential of IT.

Inaugurating the workshop, Dr S P Nawathe, Additional Director, ERNET project, described the ERNET Project which began way back in 1986. At that time, computer networking was one of the thrust areas and the project was started in 1986 as a joint effort development programme between the United Nations Development Programme and the Department of Electronics (DoE) with the purpose of developing national capability in the field. But it was not enough to develop the capability, its use needed to be demonstrated. Keeping that in mind, the capability was made available to other organizations, mainly academic and research organizations, not directly involved in this activity. And as a result, many organizations came forward to use it. They also started developing their own applications.

Dr. R.K. Pachauri, Director TERI delivering the welcome address [Photograph]

The Internet is something of a buzzword these days, every day when you open the newspaper you will see something on the Internet, it is an ocean of information on practically every subject under the sun. DoE has already recognized the importance of IT and as a result it has a major group which is called the Information Technology Group. The ERNET, which was until now a sponsored project, has now been registered as a society and it is going to be a major Internet provider for the academic and research community.

India is a developing country, and hence number of computers is very small. According to the available statistics today there is one computer per 1000 in the country. The DoE is thinking of increasing this penetration to 1 in 100 in the coming four to five years. Any progress made in the IT can reach the common man provided we have a strong telecommunication infrastructure. The national information infrastructure aims at providing connectivity. The applications will be in place for business, education, research, and entertainment. All this is possible because the cost of electronic hardware as well as the communication bandwidth is coming down all over the world. In spite of the inflation the prices of computer hardware are coming down. Same is the case with the communication bandwidth. Internet access is one disturbing factor. Whenever people have Internet access, what they want to do is download information from the developed countries. There is very little of uploading, except for software export. We cannot just depend on the developed countries for getting information; we also have to deliver. This brings us to the issue of content generation. Although the ERNET is the Internet service provider for academic and research community, it does not want to stop at that. Therefore, the ERNET aims at being not just an Internet provider but also an information provider and the aim is to increase content generation. The workshop is an effort in this direction so that there is some contribution from our side.

Participation and Faculty

There were twenty-one participants from different institutions comprising the following broad areas: (i) engineering colleges; (ii) nodal agencies of the Ministry of Non-conventional Energy Sources and the Ministry of Power; (iii) non-governmental organizations; (iv) academic institutions; and (v) various Central Government agencies.

Of the 12 sessions, all were handled by TERI professionals from the Centre for Information Technology, and Director's Office.

The coordinator and organizer of the workshop was Mr Satish Kumar, Fellow at the Centre for Information Technology, TERI.

Course Contents

The workshop was designed to focus on theory, demonstrations, hands-on sessions and covered topics like introduction to Internet and Internet service providers in India; Introduction to WWW; Internet protocols, addressing, and DNS; Designing a website; Introduction to HTML; Graphic elements; Website hosting and setting up a webserver on Windows 3.1; Publishing on the web; and Web presence: potential and opportunities

Evaluation & Suggestions for Future Development

An overwhelming majority of the participant found the workshop is very useful and would be of great use in their daily work. There were suggestions to provide step-by-step written instructions for exercises, distribution of hand-outs of all presentations, and to increase the duration of the workshop. Broad topics suggested for future workshop included animation tools for WWW; programming e.g. CGI, Java, JavaScript, ActiveX; Setting up Intranet facility; and Networking fundamentals.

- Satish Kumar