It has been almost a year since Dr Pani left us. Dr Pani stood as a remarkable refutation of that proposition. Among the pioneers of information technology in public administration, Dr Pani was decades ahead of his time. Dr Pani, however, was already engrossed in the possibilities of relational database management systems, a subject that appeared almost esoteric to most administrators of that period. Dr Pani spent his life quietly building bridges across them.