Although the process of digitalization of government departments started a decade back, but still we are unsuccessful in establishing a responsible, transparent and accountable government both at the Central and the State level. So, in order to empower the citizen and to provide an integrated and enhanced access to government services, the Government of India has announced to support the e-governance plan through three infrastructure pillars. The first pillar is to establish one lakh Common Service Centres for six lakh villages. These Common Service Centres will have physical access points for integrated delivery of all government and private services to the citizens. The second biggest pillar is to create State Wide Area Networks (SWANs), for which Rs.3,334 crore have been approved by the Union Government. SWANs for 20 states have already been sanctioned by the Cenral Government. The third pillar is the creation of National Data Bank and State Data Centres. The aim behind this is to create clearly defined service levels, to provide services at the doorstep with substantial rural outreach, enhance transparency in the administrative process, improved reliability and bridging the existing digital divide.
This is surely a big decision taken by the Central Government, which will not only help the citizens but also the State Governments to deliver better service.
Moving along the lines of the Central Government, the Uttaranchal Government has already started developing a central data repository and a public key infrastructure (PKI) to make it easier for its citizens to access government e-services. The project will consist of three parts – a household survey, design and implementation of the repository or Citizen Data Vault, and the development of PKI for citizens to access government services online or via public kiosks.
E-Governance Project in Uttaranchal
The State machinery of Uttaranchal has taken a number of major steps to provide a transparent, accountable, accessible and responsible government to the citizens. In order to empower its citizens, the Uttaranchal Government has currently undertaken a large number of projects with the help of Public-Private Partnership.
The Government is well aware that unless and until the level of PC penetration and computer literacy is increased, the long-cherished dream of empowerment of citizens cannot be achieved. Taking initiative in this direction, the Government has launched Gyanotkarsh in association with Intel to increase PC penetration in the State by making PC equipment more accessible for citizens with limited incomes, thereby enabling more households to learn new skills at home. The programme aims at enhancing computer literacy levels in the entire State. HP and HCL have been commissioned to provide a range of powerful Intel Processor-based PCs at attractive price points, created specifically for government employees. These companies, along with the Uttaranchal Government, have entered into agreements with three banks – State Bank of India, Bank of India and Union Bank – to provide loans at special interest rates to government employees, with the intention of bringing down the EMI to Rs.400.
While Intel will train 100 unemployed youth to do support and maintenance jobs in the State, the Government will back them with its employment generation scheme by providing easy loan facilities.
E-Governance Initiative
The project of e-governance is so vast that to maintain uniformity, consistency and compatibility across various e-governance initiatives, it is necessary to develop a holistic, redundant, scalable and futuristic infrastructure architecture plan. Apart from that, there should be an IT authority in the State to formulate an overall architectural framework, manage and monitor the State e-governance initiative.
Working in this direction, the Government of Uttaranchal has created an IT development agency to look after all the affairs of e-governance. Apart from this body, a Core Group on IT has also been constituted at the government level under the chairmanship of the Chief Secretary. The Principal Secretary (Finance), the Principal Secretary (Personnel) and the Secretary (Planning) are its members and the Secretary (IT) is the member-secretary. A few months back, the first meeting of this Core Group was held to discuss and deliberate upon the IT Vision, Policy & Strategy, State Data Centre, State Wide Area Networks and Citizen Service Centre. Based on this meeting, the draft ICT Policy of the State has been prepared for further deliberations.
Empowerment of Citizens
The Sate Government of Uttaranchal has taken upon the responsibility to provide basic infrastructure to the citizens so that their living conditions could be improved. In order to disseminate proper information, the Government has developed lots of portals.
Creation of Uttaranchal Portal: The aim of this portal is to provide IT-based citizen-centric applications by making government services available through the Uttaranchal portal. The key functionality that this portal carries includes information, public complaints, submit/process/register documents to government for various applications, receipt of taxes, etc., payments and procurement/tender process of the government.
The major sub-projects being done under this component are:
Social welfare: The Government has developed and implemented application software for the Social Welfare Department, which is an initialization to consolidate the activities and functioning of the department to develop and deploy citizen-centric applications with the effective usage of IT infrastructure and technology. The applications are being developed with n-tier architecture adhering to security standards of the Government of Uttaranchal, taking care of interoperability and provision for scaling up. The portal of the Social Welfare Department will have all the details regarding the schemes relating to various types of beneficiaries. Apart from that, “Content Collection and Its Creation for Badri-Kedar-Gangotri-Yamnoutri-Hemkund Sahib Destinations” has been taken up for an exhaustive coverage to the entire Chaar-Dhaam route, as also the Hemkund Sahib. This would include online reservation, facilities en route and information about the places to stay.
Portal for Farmers: Development and implementation of Agriculture Portal has been undertaken to create a unified Agriculture Portal for the benefit of the farmers. This comprises the entire lifecycle of crops, animal husbandry, fisheries, poultry including department applications and call centre to facilitate information to farmers. The Agriculture Portal will disseminate information and practical guidance to the farmers, agri-exporters and processors about the agri-crops and commodities of Uttaranchal.
Urban Development: “Development and Implementation of Application Software for the Urban Local Development Department” has been initiated to ease interface between the citizen and the government and making the government dealings more citizen-friendly through dissemination of information regarding various schemes and requirements at the grassroots level using IT tools and Common User Interface. It is to assist the citizens to seek services from a single point.
Development of Human Resource Management System (HRMS): The Government of Uttaranchal has identified HRMS as one of the core initiatives for the simple fact that payroll accounts and pension payments form a significant portion in the overall budget of the government and therefore it has become imperative to streamline the complex and dispersed payroll and human resource management system. HRMS helps to develop single integrated view of employee information, provide timely and reliable management information relating to human resource for an effective decision-making, provide tools for forecasting future cash flow, integrate with other applications such as treasury, payroll, etc.
Project for disseminating Education
Today, the biggest hurdle in the path of e-governance is the existence of illiteracy. In order to increase the literacy level in the State, the Government under the project AAROHI has already created fully-equipped computer labs at institutions that impart training to the teachers of the government and aided institutions. The teachers will, in turn, impart training to students. To ensure quality education in the remote areas where the availability of quality teachers is limited, the Government proposes to develop CD-based curricula for various courses so that these can act as an effective aid to students as well as teachers. The project shall include collaboration between the government schools and colleges, design and development of the course material, pilot projects for testing the course material, rollout in various colleges and training of end-users.
The Government is also committed to increasing IT awareness and wish to make use of IT in all the government offices. The staff working in various government offices must know effective use of computers in their day-to-day work. To make them computer literate, it is required to provide them proper training without disturbing their work at the location where they are posted. The Government has started Operation “Sakhsham” for capacity building within the Government. This project envisions compulsory training for Class 1, 2 & 3 categories of employees and optional for Class 4.
Apart from this, the State machinery runs lots of projects in the education sector. Some of the major projects are as follows: e-Classes Development of IT-enabled Course Curriculum in Science and Mathematics for Classes 9th to 12th” is to procure and develop, supply and install interactive IT-enabled Course Curriculum contents covering Science (Physics, Chemistry and Biology) and Mathematics, in both English and Hindi languages. The contents will cover the combined syllabus prescribed by the Government of Uttaranchal’s Board, CBSE and CISCE, for the rural/urban school students of Uttaranchal studying in the classes 9th to 12th.
Teacher-Student Portal: The State Government has developed and implemented Teacher-Student Portal to provide an environment to enhance the usage of experience and reap the benefits of a connected network for education. The portal is envisioned to be the first destination for teachers and students in creating an interesting and more effective learning environment. Using this portal, every school campus in the state of Uttaranchal is connected so that they can share resources; take advantage of centralized, easy-to-manage services; and receive new and updated curriculum materials. Additionally, the administrative departments can collect statistical data from each campus and store that information in a central location to facilitate quick and efficient analysis. This centralized statistical information can provide tremendous value to educational administrative authorities. The task of running the schools and thereby the education system will achieve more transparency, efficiency and effectiveness with easier access to data for decision making.
Creating IT Infrastructure
As the results from most of the projects mentioned above are to start this year (2006) and the rest in the first half of 2007, it is essential that the delivery mechanism constituted of three components, namely Data Centre, SWANs and CSCs. While the SWAN proposal of the state has already been approved by the Government of India, the Data Centre issues are currently been tackled by the State. The draft Terms of Reference are being discussed and deliberated upon internally within the department, and it is very likely that the issues will get sorted out soon. At present, the State has signed MoUs with SANCHAR-BSNL and Jaikisan.org to set up Kisan Soochna Kutirs (KSKs) and Village Information Centres (VICs) throughout the State. More than 100 KSKs and 10 VICs have been established. However, the State is preparing a wider project on the CSCs to get it approved by the GoI.
Automation of Government Department
Computerization of Land Record Department: The State Revenue Department has initiated the task of computerization of land records at the Tehsil level in 12 districts, excluding Dehradun. The progress of the project is very satisfactory. Land records at the Tehsil level in all the 78 tehsils of 12 districts have been computerized. The data updation work of all the Khataunies are over in all the 78 tehsils and only computerized copies of Record of Right (ROR) are in circulation. All the manual process of maintaining Khautanies and issuance of RORs has been stopped in the State. 53 Tehsils Land Records Computer Centres have been made fully operational and another 19 centres will start functioning very soon as all the necessary hardware and infrastructure has already been ordered and supplied. The commissioning of Hardware etc. will be completed shortly. The software for automating the Mutation Workflow Process is also under way.
Automation of Transport Department: “Vahan” software has been implemented for online registration, fitness, fees collection, tax collection, permit and enforcement. It has been successfully running for the last three years.”“Sarthi” software which deals with the issues of Driving Licences is being customized under the supervision of the Transport Department. Soon after the software meets the requirements of the Uttaranchal State, it would be implemented at the RTO Dehradun on a pilot basis.
Finally, we all know that today millions of citizens of India waste time and energy in attempting to access government information and services. But due to the lack of proper IT infrastructure, they are not able to access the information on time. But currently the way the Central as well as the State Governments are working on various e-governance projects reflects that in the near future the citizens will be able to streamline the interaction level and enrich their digital experience.
