This month we carry a technical report on the Machine-to-Machine M2M communications roadmap unveiled by the government which will act as ‘standard’ for interoperability among technologies, devices, networks and applications. This has been necessitated by the sheer number and variety of social and economic activities that are interdependent on one another in today’s digital world, and to begin with, the government has initiated the study in four sectors viz., Automotive, Health, Power, and Safety and Surveillance. The technical report on M2M Enablement in Safety and Surveillance Systems is fairly comprehensive and includes topics like technical analysis of user cases, key challenges in their implementation, and the way forward. The report talks of issues like vehicles with video surveillance and tracking systems, citizen safety using smart phones wearable devices, city-wide video surveillance systems, video surveillance for banks ATMs jewellery stores etc., home safety smart home, citizen response management system, communication technologies etc.