National e-Governance is a mission

National e-Governance is a mission

Technology can be a great leveler if it is made available in a fair and equitable manner. The National e-Governance Plan aims to employ ICT to empower people at the grassroots level said R Chandrashekhar, additional secretary (E-Gov), DIT. Pujya Trivedi reports

R Chandrashekhar, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Communications & IT, delivering the keynote address at Technology Sabha

The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) is an ambitious program undertaken by the Department of Information Technology (DIT) of the Government of India (GOI). Aimed at improving the efficiency of the delivery of government services to citizens and businesses with the help of ICT, it helps hasten the pace of government activities at both the Center and the States. NeGP was approved in May 2006 and it is further divided into 27 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs), eight Components with an overall implementation strategy and management structure.

Chandrashekhar said, “We want to turn NeGP into a program that will benefit not only companies but also the government and, most of all, the citizens of this country.”

MMPs had been identified based on the frequency of citizen/business interactions with the government and these cover a wide range of services offered by various departments. Projects falling under the purview of the Central Government, State departments, and those that span multiple ministries, departments or agencies, have been integrated under the scope of MMPs. Some of the projects are filing income tax returns, issuing passports and visas, banking and insurance at the Center. At the state level, digitization of land records, automation of registration and other activities of the transport department, treasuries etc are some of the projects, which have been automated with the use of IT. Seven other projects including e-Business, e-Courts, e-Procurement, and Common Service Centers have been handled as integrated projects. MCA-21 is a central level MMP of the Ministry of Company Affairs that has enabled the electronic filling of forms by companies.

Current status of NeGP

Most Central and Integrated project schemes have been approved, and state MMPs are in an advanced state of conceptualization, design and development. Key activities of the state MMPs have also been finalized with apex committees regularly viewing reports regarding activities and timelines. The monthly status of the programs under the NeGP is monitored by the Cabinet Secretary.

Four stages of an MMP

• Conceptualization: Major governance objectives, services, service levels, stakeholder identification and consultation are the major activities at this stage
• Design and Development: Here parameters are identified for process modification, technology is chosen, pilots are conducted, milestones and timelines defined...
• Implementation: At this stage, a Rollout Plan for the project is developed and implemented.
• Post Implementation: This is all about service delivery and service levels.

Not all MMPs follow this structure, but most of them do. 60% of Central and 90% of integrated projects have already been approved whereas only 30% of the projects at the state level have been approved. Of 16 Central and Integrated MMPs, ten projects are being implemented. Industry initiatives such as Banking and Insurance are at various stages of implementation. State sector projects are an area of concern for of 11 State MMPs only the Land Records project is at the implementation stage. All the others are stuck at conceptualization or design & development. Chandrasekhar said, “By March 2009 we want the common infrastructure to be ready. The principal area of concern, however, is the capacity building scheme, and we want states to adopt this for the constitution of State e-Governance Mission Teams (SeMT) and Project e-Governance Mission Teams (PeMT) on a priority basis.”

Infrastructure projects

Infrastructure has three components: Common Service Centers (CSC), State Wide Area Networks (SWAN), and State Data Centers (SDC). All these three components must be ready by March 2009. SWANs will enable last mile access to the CSCs and SDCs will provide industry standard infrastructure hosting facilities. Under the CSC scheme, 1,00,000 of these centers are to be set up at six lakh villages and block HQs that are to be connected through SWANs using 2 Mbps links. Below the block level, the Panchayat level will be connected using wireless links. Service Center Agencies (SCAs) that will provide e-services are being set up using the public-private-partnership (PPP) model. SDCs will be connected to the National Service Delivery Gateway (NSDG).

CSC rollout update

The CSC rollout has been completed in states like Jharkhand, WB, Haryana, Bihar, Tripura Gujarat, MP, Assam, UP, Sikkim and Uttarakhand whereas states like Punjab, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu are still implementing this scheme. “The CSC rollout and connectivity was completed in these states precisely because they did not have any legacy system, whereas other states like Karnataka, Maharashtra and Kerala already had legacy IT systems in place. That is why the CSC rollout in these states is taking time. Although the CSC roll-out is slow in these states, they are better prepared with their infrastructure, so once the issues are resolves CSC deployment will not take long,” explained Chandrasekhar. Currently UP tops the list with 17,909 CSCs followed by MP and Bihar with 9,232 and 8,463 CSCs respectively.

State of the SWAN scheme

The SWAN scheme commenced in August 2001 with the goal of providing connectivity across a state for the implementation of various e-Governance applications and to carry voice, video and data over IP links. Today, around 7,000 POP (Points of Presence) provide data, voice and video connectivity to over 1 Lakh government offices. BSNL, the primary bandwidth service provider, plans to provide at least 2 Mbps connectivity to the block level. The implementation will be through either PPP or NIC. SWAN implementations have been completed in Haryana, Delhi, Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, whereas in other states the projects are at various stages. These should be completed by June 2009

SDC status

SDCs are a vital part of the core infrastructure for e-Governance. Under NeGP, infrastructure to support various MMPs is required and, to this end, States and UTs have to establish SDCs to support applications and electronically deliver G2G, G2C, and G2B services. The SDC scheme was approved with an outlay of  Rs. 1,623.20 Crore to be spent over a period of five years with 1,041.83 crore as the States’ share under ACA (Annual Charge Adjustments). The Empowered Committee received 23 state or UT proposals that were approved for an outlay of Rs 1,077.59 crore in a meeting held on 26th February 2008. One of the requirements for SDCs was that sufficient security measures had to be in place. Chandrasekhar said, “The benefit of having services online is so high that not having them is not an option anymore. Since we deal with sensitive information belonging to citizens, we need to have stringent security measures in place. We have found out that most security breaches occur not because of infrastructure flaws but because of shortcomings in security practices followed by individuals operating the system. We have hired external agencies to conduct periodic security audits.”

NSDG status

The National e-Governance Service Delivery Gateway (NSDG) is to be the backbone for the provision of government services to the common man through CSCs. The NSDG, a MMP, can simplify this task by providing seamless interoperability and exchange of data across states. It is a medium to connect various departments and external agencies with the state and national portals. A critical piece of the infrastructure, the NSDG will be run with complete audit logs, time stamps of various governmental transactions and it will go-live by August 2008.

Onward and upward

The Government of India has planned several initiatives to accelerate these activities. Some of the new initiatives that the government has taken are Capacity Building, e-Bharat and the National e-Governance Agency (NeGA).The Capacity Building scheme was approved in January 2008 with an outlay Rs. 313 Crore and it provides an institutional framework for state level strategic decision-making. An Empowered Committee allocated funds on 30th January 2008 to States and UTs with 60% coming from the DIT and 40% from state funds under the ACA provision. These funds will include the salaries of the people involved, training, infrastructure, office maintenance etc. Under the Capacity Building scheme, states are required to build capacity in terms of human resources for conceptualization, development and management of e-Governance projects. Implementation will not fall under the scope of this scheme.

Apart from this,  SeMTs and PeMTs will help frame HR guidelines and policies. Chandrasekhar said, “The biggest problem that we have found is with clear-cut HR policies and training. e-Governance needs people with interdisciplinary knowledge, the ability to understand technology and domain knowledge. We need HR staff that understand technology and can help solve critical issues.” To tackle this problem IIM-A and Manipal University are preparing HR-Executive courses on government-related projects. DIT has also initiated action for the empanelment of contract personnel and agencies; states can also select interested candidates on deputation.

The e–Bharat proposal started with an initial loan of $300 million to the NeGP from the World Bank (WB) with 75% of the project cost coming as a grant from the GOI to the states and 25% of the cost to be shared by the states. Under this initiative, special purpose vehicles were to be set-up wholly owned by the GOI. This would follow the World Bank procurement procedure with a MoU to be signed by participating Line Ministries and the NeGA.

There are always problems, and one concern is that the key people involved are shuffled off to other posts. Chandrasekhar said, “People inside the government change frequently as they get promoted, or transferred. If these people are in fact the key drivers, then the whole chain gets affected and this brings the system back to its starting point. So we are trying to identify the people who have been recently promoted or transferred and [retain them on these projects in a way that] it does not affect either their career path or the process.”

DIT plans to finish the infrastructure deployment during 2008-09 including deployment of SWANs, CSCs, SDCs as well as Capacity Building.

The formation of the NeGA and the preparation of MMPs for all states are underway. Further, the government wants to finish deploying applications during 2009-2010 and finalize the rollout of e-Services in 2010-2011.

pujya.trivedi@expressindia.com