RESEARCH REPORT ON

E- GOVERNANCE
OF

MASTER IN BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

TO

SHUATS
Submitted To: Submitted By:

Mr. Rajesh Kumar Anupriya singh

Enrollment no:- M-2162010176

1
 Session 2017-2018

PROJECT REPORT

ON

“E- GOVERNANCE”

Submitted in partial fulfillment towards degree of

Mater in Business Administration (MBA)

UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF :

MR. RAJESH SHRIVASTAVA

Submitted by:
Anupriya Singh

Enrolment No: M-2162010176

MBA IV Sem

2
 PREFACE

Dissertation Report is an integral part of the curriculum of award

of POST GRADUATE DIPLOMA IN MANAGEMENT from Sam
higginbottom university of Agriculture , Technology and Science.

The main objective of dissertation is to given clear understanding

of the existing business problem and their complexities and to
implement theoretical knowledge practically. I got opportunity to
make a Dissertation report on “A Study on Consumer Behavior in
online shopping”.

As, I know the success of a business in today’s cut throat world of

marketing depend upon its marketing policy. Marketing mix is the
crux of marketing policy of any business and the dissertation
revolves around this concept.

ANUPRIYA SINGH

3
 Enrollment no: M-2162010176

DECLARATION

I hereby state that the Dissertation

report entitled “A Study on E-
GOVERNANCE” submitted by me in
partial fulfillment of the requirement for
the award of PGDM(Services) is my
original work and that it has not previously
formed the basis for the award of any
other Degree ,Diploma, Fellowship or other
similar titles.

DATE:

PLACE: ANUPRIYA SINGH

Enrollment no: M-2162010176

4
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This dissertation has been an eye-opener for me
as it opened new vista of information to me.
Words shall never be sufficient to describe my
experience while doing this dissertation. It is the
product of countless hours. My thanks go out to all
those who helped, whether through their comments,
feedback or suggestions.

I’m deeply indebted to my revered faculty valuable

guidance, constant supervision and above all her
continuous encouragement & support during the
tenure of my project. I’m also very thankful to Mr.
Rajesh Shrivastava for providing me with all
facilities.

5
 Lastly, no words could adequately convey my thanks
to my family members and friends who indirectly co-
operated with me.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface.................................................................................................................…......3
Declaration…………………………………………………………………………....4
Acknowledgement…………………………………………………………………….5

1. Introduction……………...………………………………………………………………….7-10
2. e-Governance and ICT……………………………………………………………….11

3. Role of Government in ICT……………………………………………………………….12-15

4. SCOPE OF E-GOVERNANCE…………………………………………………...........................15-19

5. E-Secretariat……………………………………………………………………….20-

24

6. Origins in India……………………………………………………………………………..25-31

7. Significance of the Study…………………………………………………………………31-35

8. Review of Literature………………………………………………………………………36-46

9. Objectives of the Study…………………………………………………….....................46-48

10. E-governance initiatives in India……………………………………………………......49-95

11. E-governance in Punjab & Chandigarh : Initiatives and its implementation……96-

149

12. Role of Information and communication and communication Technology in

E-Governance and Its impact on……………………………………………………….150-174

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13. Conclution ………………………………………………………………………………...175-

209

INTRODUCTION
“The ubiquitous mouse has a special place in the India psyche. It is

revered as the vehicle of Lord Ganesh-the remover of all obstacles. Today,

in the arena of governance , its Pentium-powered avatar reigns supreme

in the hands of an increasingly e-literate janata”.

One click is deemed good enough to cut the much-dreaded Indian red-tape to

shreds. Another one takes the wind out of all those touts hanging around public

offices. Public accountability and responsive services seem suddenly just a blip

way. Welcome to the transforming potential of e-Governance……

The term e-Governance has different connotations:

 E-administration- The use of ICTs to modernize the state; the creation of

data repositories for MIS, computerization of records.

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  E-services-The emphasis here is to bring the state closer to the citizens.

Examples include provision of online services. E-administration and e-

services together constitute what is generally termed e-government.

 E-Governance- The use of It to improve the ability of government to

address the needs of society. It includes the publishing of policy and

programme related information to transact with citizens. It extends beyond

provision of on-line services and covers the use of IT for strategic planning

and reaching development goals of the government.

 E-democracy- The use of It to facilitate the ability of all sections of society

to participate in the governance of the state. The remit is much broader

here with a stated emphasis on transparency, accountability and

participation. Examples could include online disclosure policies, online

grievance redress forums and e-referendums. Conceptually, more potent.

“E-Government” Is the name given to the third of the Government’s Information

Age initiatives to transform the accessibility, quality and cost-effectiveness of

public services by using technology.

Global shifts towards increased deployment of IT by governments emerged in the

nineties, with the advent of the World Wide Web. What multimedia, support

hyperlinked information and interactive information meant was a clearer avenue

for G to C interactions and the promise of the attainment of the goals of good

governance. Governments weighed down by the rising expectations and

demands of a highly aware citizenry suddenly began to believe that there can be

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a new definition of public governance characterized by enhanced efficiency,

transparency, accountability and a citizen-orientation in the adoption of IT

enabled governance.

WHY ARE WE PURSUING E-GOVERNDMET1?

Understand the e-government is about transformation; technology is a tool. E-

government is about transformation that helps citizens and businesses find new

opportunities in the world’s knowledge economy. It holds great potential. Yet, if e-

government works, manages information, manages internal function, serves

citizens and businesses-then it may not produc all the benefits expected from the

time and money invested. Use e-government to rethink the role of government.

Use it as a tool to further economic development and good governance.

There are four guiding principles:

 Government Services should be citizen-focused. People do not need

to know how government is organized or who does what. Services need to

be offered in ways that make sense to the customer.

 Government Services should be accessible. All services which can be

delivered electronically should be, whether over the Internet, through

mobile phones, digital TV, call centres, or personal computers-customer

demand will determine the mix.

 Government Services should be inclusive. New services must be

developed so that they are available to all and easy to use.

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  Managing Information. Information policies must be adopted which are

coherent and compatible so that the best use is made of Government’s

valuable knowledge and Information resources.

Electronics government is neither easy nor cheap. Before committing the

time, resources and political will necessary to successfully implement an e

government initiative, understand be basic reasons for pursuing (and not

pursuing) e-government. E-government is not a shortcut to economic

development, budget savings or clean, efficient government; it is a tool for

achieving these goals. Especially in developing countries where resources are

scarce, rushing forward with ill-conceived e-government plans can be a costly

mistake, financially and politically. E-government, as with all reforms, cannot be

achieved simply by drafting a law or issuing an order from political leaders. It

requires changing how officials think and act, how they view their jobs, how they

share information between departments (G2G), with businesses (G2B) and with

citizens (G2C). It requires re-engineering the government’s business processes,

both within individual agencies and across government.

At the same time, e-government responds to changes outside of

government. How a society- its citizens, businesses and civil society- deals with

government and with information is changing radically in many places. Citizens

are starting to expect government services to equal those services offered by

and expected of the private sector. Over time, citizens will likely act more like

consumers. Government must adjust to this, and e-government is one tool that

can help.

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 e-Governance and ICT
“ICTs (Information and Communication Technology) are effectively

showing new dimensions to old institutional setups. There is a reinforced thrust

for an informed and participatory citizenry for efficient e-governance. It goes

without saying that impact of ICT on institutional changes is fast spreading

across the boundaries of social and political arrangements of societies.”2

ICTs and the internet in particular, as a means of mainstreaming public

policy decisions, practices and processes, while providing citizens with greater

and easier access to government services. Increased information flows between

the public and private sector and citizens have improved transparency and

accountability and established an environment of trust and reliability between

citizens and elected officials in many parts of the world. Moreover, many

ministries responsible for ICTs and modernization initiatives have realized the

11
importance of a clear national strategy for becoming a part of the global

Information Society and narrowing the gap between “haves” and “have-nots.”

Role of Government in ICT

The role of the government in ICT can be distinguished between the following

categories:

G1: Laying ICT infrastructure, producing ICT equipment, financing pubic

R&D;

G2: Creating the macroeconomic environment for growth and innovation

in ICT, including fiscal policies (cost, innovation, investment, venture

capital), legal and regulatory environment (competition, independent

regulator, rule of law, intellectual property protection) and channeling

and mobilizing resources for ICT;

G3: Education policy for the right amount and quality of manpower

resources for a network-ready-economy- curricula, ICT training

facilities, wiring/networking of educational institutions;

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G4: Addressing ‘digital divide’ domestically and internationally, giving

signals to markets- articulating a national vision of ICT, according

national priority to ICT, undertaking large projects, championing

national interests in international forums;

G5: e-government services online, e-procurement, trade facilitation, civil

society participation, accelerating the adoption of ICT by government

departments and agencies and establishing credibility. To compete

successfully in a network-based global economy, governments need

to be both leaders and facilitators.

The leadership and facilitation roles comprise the following

elements:

 Developing national e-strategy, making ICT adoption and network

readiness a national priority, bridging “digital divide” and championing an

e-readiness framework;

 Undertaking innovative projects that make a difference to lead by

example, adopting best practices and pushing for their adoption by others

and developing public-private-people partnerships;

 Implementing right to Information (RTI) and committing to transparency in

governmental operations;

 Reforming government processes covering areas such as revenues,

expenditures, procurement, service delivery, customer grievances etc.,

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  Tracking, storing and managing information, promoting production of

national content online and through electronic media;

 According high priority to protection of individual rights, intellectual

property, privacy, security, consumer protection etc. and mobilizing the civil

society;

 Documenting “best success” and “wort failures” – benefiting from

knowledge;

 Developing a supportive framework for early adoption of ICT and creating

a regulatory framework for ICT-related activates, e.g. fixed and mobile

communication, e-commerce and Internet services;

 Promoting innovation and risk-taking through fiscal concessions and

availability of venture capital; creating investment climate for domestic and

foreign investment in ICT sector;

 Promoting ICT training, education and research;

 Negotiating and influencing the proper adoption of international

framework, norms and standards by participating actively in the

governance of the global information economy3.

e-Governance is the application of Information and Communication

Technology (ICT) for delivering Government Services, exchange of information,

communication transactions, integration various stand-alone systems and

services between Government and Citizens (G2C), Government and Business

(G2B) as well as back office processes and interactions within the entire

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Government frame work. Through the e-Governance, the Government services

will be made available to the citizens in a convenient, efficient and transparent

manner. The Government being the service provider, it is important to motivate

the employees for delivering the services through ICT. To achieve this, the

Government employees are being trained on technology and started realizing the

advantage of ICT. The aim is to make them through with e-Governance

applications and responsive to the technology driven administration.

What does E-Governance seek to achieve

 Efficiency

 Transparency

 Citizen’s participation

Enabling e-governance through ICT4 contributes to

 Good governance

 Trust and Accountability

 Citizen’s awareness and empowerment

 Citizen’s welfare

 Democracy

 Nation’s economic growth

ICT is the biggest enabler of change and process reforms with minimum

resistance. Decades of attempts for government and process reforms fade in

face of what ICT has achieved in few years. People would not so readily accept

process change but in the name of ICT they do.

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SCOPE OF E-GOVERNANCE

E-Governance is the use of information and communication technologies

to support Good governance. It has the following main dimensions:5

GOVERNMENT TO CITIZEN (G2C)

G2C will aim at connecting citizens to government by taking to citizens and

supporting accountability, by listening to citizens and supporting democracy, and

by improving public servies. It will involve better services to the citizens through

single point delivery mechanism and will involve areas like:

E-Citizen

Under e-citizen integrated service centre will be created. The purpose of

these centre will be to take over the various customer services in due course. It

will offer services like issue of Certificates, Ration Cards, Passports, Payment of

Bills and taxes etc. These centers will become one-stop Government Shops for

delivery of all services.

E-Transport

The transport aspects that can be easily e-governed include: Registration

of motor vehicles, Issue of driving licenses, Issue of plying permissions (Permits),

Tax and fee collection through Cash and Bank Challans and Control of Pollution.

E- Medicine

It will involve linking of various hospitals in different parts of the country

and provide better medical services to the citizen.

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E-Education

E-Education will constitute various initiatives of educating the citizen and

the Government with the various Information technologies.

E-Registration

E-Governing the registration and transfer of the properties and stamp duty

to be paid thereon will bring substantial reduction of paper work and reduce the

duplicating of entries. Further the transparency in work will increase and the

overall time of process registration will reduce.

Essentials for achievement

 Information for All. Keeping the citizen informed, providing him with

details of Government activities. The citizen will act as watch dog to

Government if the information will be available to him. Certain interest

groups like the journalists, opposition will always keep an eye on the

expenditure of the Government, status of which will be available on-line.

The same will bring accountability amongst Civil Servants. The rationale is

to increase the pressure on staff to perform well and to improve public

understanding of government.

 Citizen Feedback: Citizen Feedback is must for improving the

Government Services. Unless the Government listens to its customer, it

will not be able to find out what does the citizens want. The elected

17
 representatives who are said to be voice of citizens also are not the true

voice for they get their votes according to their offerings and not their

offerings are according to customer wants. In short it is an effort to make

the public sector decision responsive to citizen’s view or needs.

 Improving services: World’s best companies have done it, Indian

companies have copied them, Governments abroad have followed the

suit, why can’t the Indian Government. Improving the service delivered to

the citizen on dimensions such as speed, quality, reliability, convenience

and cost. Information Technology will have a big role to play in the same;

the services can be delivered from 24-hours one-stop Government shops.

CONSUMER TO GOVERNMENT (C2G)

C2G will mainly constitute the areas where the citizen interacts with

Government. It will include areas like election when citizens vote for the

Government; Census where he provides information about himself to the

Government; taxation where he is paying taxes to the Government.

E-Democracy

The e-democracy is an effort to change the role of citizen from passive

information giving to active citizen involvement. In an e-democracy the

Government will be informing the citizen, representing the citizen, and

encouraging the citizen to vote, consulting the citizen and engaging the citizen in

the Governance. Taking the citizens input about the various government policies

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by organizing an e-debate will further strengthen the e-democracy. The concept

of e-debate is similar to chat over the Internet, wherein not only the citizens but

also the political leaders contesting the elections participate. He citizens give

their feedback about the various policies of the parties and particularly the

manifesto of the party. The initiative will further strengthen the process by

enhancing the representative role, improving accessibility of citizens to their

elected members and developing the capacity of elected representatives to

engage in e-government. Elected members will also be provided with access to

the local authority’s Intranet and e-mail systems so that they become available

online for decision making and people can easily access them.

Essentials for achievement:

Citizen Participation: For achievement of the above initiative the citizen has to

participate in the Government Business and therefore spreading awareness

becomes the responsibility of the State. The elections should not be fought on

the principle of what one party or other has to offer. But they should be fought on

the principle of what the citizens require. Market research programs should be

carried out using the Information Systems to determine the needs of the citizens.

GIS could be used as a tool to find out potential gaps in the services offered.

GOVERNMET TO GOVERNMENT (G2G)

This can also be referred as e-Administration. It involves improving

government processes by cutting costs, by managing performance, by making

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strategic connections within government, and by creating empowerment. It will

involve networking all Government offices so as to produce synergy among

them. The major areas are:

E-Secretariat
Secretariat which is the seat of power has a lot of valuable information

regarding the functioning of the State. The cross-linking of various departments

and exchange of information amongst various components will simplify the

process of Governance.

E-Police

E-Police will ehlp to built citizen confidence. There will be two databases,

one of police personnel and the other of criminals. The database of personnel will

have the records of their current and previous postings. This will help to track

policemen specialized in certain geographical regions and skills. Take for

example; we want to look for a forensic expert. The database within seconds

gives the list of all forensic experts. The same database will give the track of their

details like service record, family background etc which will also be helpful

intelligent posting and promotion of personnel. The second database will be of

criminals. This database has to be upgraded to notional database for its total

utility. By just typing the name of a criminal a police officer will be able to know

the details of his past activates, including his modus operandi and the area of

operation. Further a database like this will help tap the criminals easily for all the

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police stations will have simultaneous access to their record. The module will

also include G2C activities like online filing of FIR’s, finding the case status of an

FIR. Creating a database of Lost and Found can assist further lost and found of

valuables and individuals.

E-Court

The pending court cases in India have brought the legal system to a halt.

Not only are the consumers asking for changes in the administration, but also the

system will collapse if it continues in this manner. IT can transform the system

and bring in the court cases to a level of zero dependency. Creating a database

of cases can do the same. In fact such a system will ehlp to avoid all the appeals

to High Courts and Supreme Court, for the Judges can consider the appeals from

an intranet wherein the case remains in the same district court but the Higher

Court gives their decision online based on the recorded facts of the case. Such a

step will not only help the citizens but will also reduce the backlog of cases.

Further the use of IT in the areas like recording of court proceedings, high

resolution remote video to identify fraudulent documents, live fingerprints

scanning and verification, remote probation monitoring, electronic entry of reports

and paper work will further speed up the court proceedings.

State Wide Networks

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 This will involve linking all the departments of the Government with various

district headquarters and the state capital, facilitating the flow of information

between the various state departments and its constituents. Here various blocks

will be linked to district Headquarters, district headquarters to State Headquarters

and State Headquarters to the National Capital.

Essentials for achievement

 Cutting Expenditure: With proper process control the input output ratio

can be improved. The same can be achieved by cutting financial time

costs. Cutting Government expenditure will lead to saving and

accountability.

 Organize around outcomes, not tasks. These principles suggest that a

single person should perform all the steps in a process and that the

person’s job be designed around the outcome or objective rather than a

single task. Say, for example, a citizen applies for permit- it becomes the

duty of the receiving authority that the citizen gets the same, rather than

moving around to get it done.

 Managing process performance: planning, monitoring and controlling

the performance of process resource (human, financial and other).

Information supports this by providing information about process

performance and performance standards. The rationale is to make more

efficient for effective use of process resources.

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  Establish a network: Treat geographically dispersed resources as though

they were centralized. Government can use databases,

telecommunications networks, and standardized processing systems to

get the benefits of scale and coordination, while maintaining the benefits

of flexibility and service. Strategic connections in Government should be

established like central-to-local, ministry-to-ministry, executive-to-

legislature, and decision make-to-data store.

 Delegate and Empower: Put the decision point where the work is

performed, and build control into the process. Thus, for overall GPR to

succeed the decision making should pass on to the people who do the

actual work from the people who are just monitoring it. People engaged in

actual activities should be empowered to make decisions at the requited

focal point and hence to delegate such activities on their own so that the

process itself can have built in controls. This will not only speed up the

process but will but cost as well.

GOVERNMENT TO BUSINESS (G2B)

E-Taxation

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 This will constitute the various services a business house needs to get

from the Government, which includes getting licenses etc. In a similar scenario, it

can also flow from a business house to the Government as in the case of

procurements, from such business houses by the Government. This will become

a B2G service.

Essential for achievement

 Standards: Standards for Electronic Transactions or E-Commerce needs

to be built. The standards will also include standards on content etc.

 Payment Mechanism: A secure payment mechanism needs to be built to

enable payments over the electronic medium.

 PKI: PKI or Public key Infrastructure is required for secure and authentic

transactions.

GOVERNMENT TO NGO(G2N)

E-Society

Building interactions beyond the boundaries of government by building

government partnerships and civil society, it will involve building various

associations or interest groups that will ensure the betterment of the society.

Such initiative deal particularly with the relationship between government and

citizens: either as voters/stakeholder from whom the public sector derives its

legitimacy, or as customers who consume public services.

Essential for Achievement

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  Publishing: Delivering data to citizens. This will involve open access to

Government Information. The citizen has a right to Government

information and its activities.

 Interaction: Delivering data to citizens and receiving data from citizens.

This will involve taking feedback from the citizens and interacting with the

interest groups.

Origins in India
E-governance originated in India during the seventies with a focus on in-

house government applications in the areas of defence, economic monitoring,

planning and the deployment of ICT to manage data intensive functions related

to elections, census, tax administration etc. the efforts of the National Informatics

Center (NIC) to connect all the district headquarter during the eighties was a

watershed. From the early nineties, e-governance has seen the sue of IT for

wider sect oral applications with policy emphasis on reaching out to rural areas

and taking in greater inputs from NGOs and private sector as well. There has

been an increasing involvement of international donor agencies such as DfID, G-

8, UNDP, WB under the framework of e-governance for development.

While the emphasis has been primarily on automation and

computerization, state Endeavour’s to use IT include forays into connectivity,

networking, setting up systems, for processing information and delivering

services. At a micro level, this has ranged from IT automation in individual

department, electronic file handling, and access to entitlements, public grievance

25
systems, service delivery for high volume routine transactions such as payment

of bills, tax dues to meeting poverty alleviation goals thought the promotion of

entrepreneurial models and provision of market information. The thrust has

varied across initiatives, with some focusing on enabling the citizen state

interface for various government services, and others focusing on bettering

livelihoods.

The Economic Times recently reported that the government in India is

emerging as the fourth larges vertical spender on information technology after

the telecom, manufacturing and banking and finance industries. According to

Gartner estimates, the Indian Government has spent around 1 billion USD on

information technology in 2002. This includes the expenditure of the Central and

state governments on hardware, software, telecommunication equipment,

telecommunication services, and IT services, but excludes salary costs IT staff.

In fact, the government accounted for 9 per cent of the total IT spends in India for

the year 2002, and in five years that is estimated to go up to 15 per cent. Though

e- government is still in its infancy, over 20 states/ union territories already have

an IT policy in place. In terms of basic computerization, police departments,

treasury, land records, irrigation and justice are seen as having the maximum

potential.

Nasscom estimates that in the next five years, state governments in India

will spend close to Rs. 15,000 crores on computerizing their operations. The

pressure to be IT savvy is not only to keep with times, but comes from a more

pragmatic dimension; loans to governments from multilaterals have now become

26
more or less contingent upon a proper treasury management system which

translates into a computerized system that will tell lending institutions what has

happened to the money that it has lent. Currently, India’s manual treasury

systems don’t permit this with the kind of transparency required.

National e-Governance Plan

A major initiative of the Government for ushering in e-Governance on

national scale, called National e-Governance Plane (NeGP) was approved on

16the May 2006. NeGP consists of 27 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs)

encompassing 9 central MMPs, 11 State MMPs and 7 integrated MMPs that

span multiple backend Ministries/Departments. It also includes 8 program

support components aimed at creating the right governance and institutional

mechanisms, core infrastructure, policies & standards and the necessary legal

framework for adoption of e-Governance in the country. It is implemented at the

Central, State and Local Government levels.

State Wide Area Networks

Under NeGP, Government had approved the Scheme for establishing

State Wide Area Networks (SWANs) across the country in 29 States/ 6 UTs at a

total outlay of Rs. 3,334 crore. Under this Scheme, it is envisaged to provide

secured Network from State Headquarters up to the Block level with a minimum

bandwidth capacity of 2 Mbps. As of March 2009, 7 States/ UTs (Delhi, Haryana,

Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Chandigarh, Tripura and Punjab) have already

27
complete the SWAN implementation, while implementation is at an advance

stage in 12 States/UTs.

State Data Centres

State Data Centres (SDC) has been identified as one of the important

elements of the core infrastructure for supporting e-Governance initiatives under

NEGP. The Government has approved the scheme in January 2008 at an

estimated outlay of Rs. 1623.20 crore to cover 28 States and 6 UTs across the

country. SDC Proposals of 31 States/UTs have already been approved by the

Department with a total outlay of Rs. 1378.50 crore.

Common Services Centers

The Common Services Centres (CSCs) are one of te three infrastructure

pillars of the National e-Governance Plan and would serve as the physical front

end for delivering Government and private sector at the deeorstep of the citizen.

The Government had approved this Scheme for facilitating establishment of more

that 100.000 broadband Internet-enabled CSCs in rural areas of the country at a

total cost of Rs 5742 crore. It is being implemented under Public Private

Partnership mode. As of March 2009, number of CSCs rolled out in 20 States of

India is 36,485.

Capacity Building Scheme

In order to provide a mechanism for adequate capacity building and

training for end user, a Capacity Building Scheme at an outlay of Rs. 313.00

28
crore has been approved in January 2008. This envisions establishment of

institutional framework for State Level Strategic decision-making including setting

up of State e-Governance Mission Team. A Capacity Building Management Cell

has been set up in the Department for overall coordination and implementation of

Capacity Building Scheme.

e-District

e-District is a State Mission Mode Project under the National e-

Governance Plan. The Project aims to target certain high volume services

currently not covered by any MMP under the NeGP and undertake backend

computerization to enable the delivery of these services through Common

Services Centers. Under this Scheme, pilot projects, which were initiated in 2007,

have now been extended to 14 States covering 36 districts. During the year

significant ground has been covered in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Assam.

Electronics/ IT Hardware Manufacturing

Electronics Hardware Manufacturing continues to be a thrust area for the

Government. The Special Incentive Package Scheme that was announced on

21st March 2007 to encourage investments for setting up Semiconductor

Fabrication and other micro and nano technology manufacture industries in India

has received very positive response from prospective investors. Seventeen

proposals involving an investment of the order of Rs. 157,000 crore, over a

29
period of next 10 years covering setting up of Semiconductor fabrication, LCD

panel manufacturing and Solar photovoltaic including polysislicon, under the

Scheme have been received.

Information Technology Investment Regions

There is felt need to develop infrastructure facilities in tier 2 and tier 3

cities, as there is little scope of building additional commercial speace in the five

tier 1 cities, New Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Chennai. In order to

address this need, a policy resolution for setting up of Information Technology

Investment Regions was notified by the Central Government on 29 th May 2008.

this transparent and investment friendly policy will help promote investment in IT-

ITeS/ Electronic Hardware Manufacturing units.

The Information Technology (Amendment) Act 2008

The Information Technology Act 2000, a legal framework for transaction

carried out electronically was enacted to facilitate e-Commerce, e-Governance

and to take care of computer related offences. Over the years, with several new

forms of computer crime, misuse and fraud taking place, a need was felt to

strengthen legislation pertaining to information security. The Information

Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008 has been published in the Gazette. The Act

upgrades the existing legal framework to instill confidence in the users and

investors in the area of Information Technology in the country. This Act inter-alia

30
adds provisions to the existing Information Technology Act, 2000 to deal with new

forms of cyber crimes like publicizing sexually explicit material in electronic form,

video voyeurism, cyber terrorism, breach of confidentiality and leakage of data by

intermediary and e-commerce frauds. The formulation of Rules under the Act is

in the process.

Cyber Security

Government of India has setup the Indian Computer Emergency

Response Team (CERT-In) for providing early security warning and effective

incident response. It operates on 24x7 basis and is actively engaging its users

with early warning alerts and advisories. Nationwide efforts are being made to

increase Cyber Security education, awareness and skill sin the country. It is

aimed at catering to the needs of critical sectors, law enforcement & judiciary and

e-governance project owners. Special trainings programs are being conducted

for juridical officer and Law enforcement agencies. About hundred personnel

from various Government agencies have been trained at the Carnegie Mellon

University, USA as Master trainers that can train many more in the country.

National Knowledge Network

Government had decided to establish a National Knowledge Network

(NKN) with scalable multi gigabit capabilities which will connect 1000 nodes

covering the universities, research institutions, libraries, laboratories, hospitals

and agricultural institutions across the country. This will also act as a backbone

31
for the e-governance. By facilitating the flow of information and knowledge, the

network will address the critical issue of access, create a new paradigm of

collaboration and enrich the research efforts in the country. The initial phase of

the establishment of NKN has been started by upgrading 15 PoPs of NICNET at

2.5 gbps capacity. Six virtual classrooms over NKN have been established at six

IITs.

Significance of the Study

Transparency and accountability

Robert Klitggard has an interesting equation to explain corruption: C =

M+D-T. Coouption = Monopoly + Discretion - Transparency. In India, the state

holds an absolute monopoly over most of the delivery of basis services. This

means that for most of the citizens, there is no exit option available to move from

an unresponsive and unreliable provider. This is where e-governance can bring

in radical changes. In the Indian case, one can showcase a few pioneering

initiatives to underscore the potency of technology to enhance transparency and

accountability in matters of governance.

Bangalore City Corporation has recently introduced the Funds Based

Accounting System (FBAS) as a strategic management tool. Apart from radically

altering the basic financial architecture by generating accurate and timely data,

FBAS also loops back the information to the public domain. This highly enabling

framework of integrating backend reforms with front-end outreach has virtually

32
galvanized civic participation by applying this credible and open information base

to monitor the activities of the local government.

This initiative (called PROOF-Public Record of Operations and Finance) is

an advocacy campaign that uses the quarterly statement of the corporation as a

tool to take information about the financial performance of the corporation to

citizens. It seeks to bring multiple stakeholders together in an exercise to track

financial statements of the government, develop performance indicators for

different expenditures, and create a space for management discussion. It seeks

to ask the basic question, where is the money of the government going and what

value are we getting out of the money being spent.

The work of PROOF has enabled questions to be raised about the assets

owned by the city corporation, the way in which these assets are being used, and

also the examination of whether development expenditure, like in education, is

giving value for money.

Another highly enabling application has been in the field of procurement.

Bids and tenders for public works are widely perceived to be the fountain-head of

corruption in local governments. Saukaryam in Vishakapatnam has addressed

this issue by an e-enabled disclosure process of publishing all financial

transactions- bidding and auctions, decisions, tenders, procurement etc. through

the net into the public domain.

Online Citizen Charters on key services is another example of using the

power of ICT to usher in more transparency and accountability. By openly

33
committing to standards and norms, public agencies are now holding themselves

to account. And technology has dramatically altered the ease of public access.

` However, there are few downsides to this encouraging scenario. In many

cases, the government websites seldom get up data and therefore public

information is rendered obsolete. The cutting edge of the Internet is its dynamic

interface and if that organizing principle is truncated, the relevance of the

medium ceases to exist. The problem of the last mile also looms large.

Participation and responsiveness

The essence of a true democracy rests upon a healthy contestation of a

plurality of views. One undisputed impact of the ICT revolution is the widening of

the space for participation and contestation. Space and hierarchy have been

virtually decimated by the Internet. This of course, has also meant that traditional

power structures have been reoriented and the sarkar-janata relations are

showing a shift from a provider-beneficiary mode to facilitator-participant one.

How have governments in India responded to this opportunity/ crisis?

Gyandoot and Lok Mitra have a facility for citizens to lodge their

grievances and there is anecdotal evidence that complaints have been attended

to by the authorities. However, these are sporadic successes. A quick study of

the existing scenario reveals that states are by and large, not responsive. For

example, though many of the key political figures, such as out ministers and MPs

and Chief Ministers have published their email address, in reality, most do not

respond to e-mails.

34
 The Ministry of Agriculture has an interesting project that provides e-

extension services through computer kiosks in some Indian states. The success

of this endeavour in Ranga Reddy district in Andhra Pradesh is primarily due to

the continuous flow of information from officials to women in the community and

the responsiveness of the officials to the queries and feedback from

communities. The official use tools such as video-conferencing for regular

communication with the project sites.

There are a few cases a citizen led initiative that have created the space

for people to participate in the democratic process.

The ‘Lok Satta’ internet based campaign aims to promote probity in the

electoral processes. Such internet based advocacy campaigns have the potential

to persuade governments to respond.

It is only when citizens can engage with governments through the new

spaces being made available to them can the notion of e-democracy begin to

take birth. E-governance must allow for more than interaction. The shift towards

e-democracy will be possible only if there is scope for representation – the state

where the space for consultations are legitimized and citizen voices are

incorporated into police formulation and operational modalities; and for influence-

when the citizens are accorded right to litigate and directly impact on policy and

praxis. However, the possibilities of ICT impacting on the direct representation

process to influence policy, which some of the developed countries have been

exploring through tools like e-referendums, seem to be quite far away in the India

context.

35
 The manner in which technology is influencing human development in

Idnia seems to be top-down, with elite users, who use the technology to share

information and analysis guiding the mobilization of public opinion nationally and

internationally to change policy regimes. The more democratic face of the

technology, evidenced in the use of technology by the disadvantaged and their

participation of in the formulation and implementation of policies, is startle

absent.

No systematic research has been conducted sto trace effective

implementation of e-governance programmes in Punjab and Chandigarh with

special reference to its effectiveness and usability of the soft ware’s and

architectures.

Review of Literature
Ganes P. Sahu, Yogesh K. Dwivedi & Vishanth Weerakkody6 (2009)

explains that e-government has become a global phenomenon through its use of

Internet technologies as a platform for exchanging information, providing

services, and transaction with citizens, businesses, and other arms of

government. E-Government Development and fiffusion: Inhibitors and Facilitators

of Digital Democracy provides a comprehensive, integrative, and global

assessment of the e-government evolution in terms of real-life success and

failure cases.

36
 Ashwani Saith, M. Vikayabaskar and V. Gayathri 7 (2008) puts together

the optimistic voices of techno-idealists, critical social science perspective on

technology and a range of empirical material on the impact of Information and

Communication Technologies on the lives of people. The author traces these

processes across urban and rural spaces for work, consumption, e-governance,

and highlights the new kinds of social identities they are fostering in Idnia. It

opens up an arena for dialogue between activists, technologists, policy makers

and academia on using Information and Communication Technology for

development.

Rohan Samarajiva and Ayesha Zainudeen8 (2008) examines Information

and Communication Technology with the prospects of policy formulation in the

development of the country. They stress on the assumption that connectivity is

the opportunity to engage in electronically mediated communication and is good

for the society especially in the emerging Asia.

Ayesha Zaindeen & rohan Samarajiva9 (2007) examines how theoretically

optimal concepts actually get implemented in the hard terrain of emerging Asia.

They gleans lessons from five Asian counties- Bangladesh, India, Indonesia,

Nepal, and Sri Lank- based on their experiences with expanding ICT connectivity.

It reports the findings of a cutting edge 3,000+ sample demand-side survey of

telephone use at the bottom of the pyramid’ in Indian and Sri Lanka.

Toshio Obi10 (2007) stresses on e-Governance which is regarded as on of

the most important subjects in the Information Society. Global e-governance for

both public and private sectors is becoming extremely significant in an innovative

37
and seamless world community. Society offers understanding of what information

society or ubiquitous society is all about. E-Government deals with different

counties/area in the world focusing on all of their visions, strategies and priority

areas as well as on the key challenges and lessons of e-Government.

Prasenjit Maiti11 (2007) covers an extensive range of critical areas that

have one common them of questioning the accepted parameters of development

from different angels influenced by multiple academic backgrounds. An attempt

has been made to accommodate conflicting points of view that would facilitate

the reader to arrive at his/her own understanding o the problems under purview.

R P Sinha 12 (2006) stressed that India in the last twenty years have seen

dramatic increase in the development and the spread of information and

communication technology along with the advent of the user friendly computing

systems and networking. Governments have been quick to pick up its

applications for providing better information and services to the people.

Vikram K. Chand 13 (2006) focused on successful innovations in public

service delivery in India and drawn lesions to initiate scaling up and replication. It

documents and analyzes ten cases of innovation in service delivery across a

range of sectors in India. The criteria used to choose these cases are four fold.

By presenting ten detailed case studies of how public services have been

transformed across a range of sectors, the author provides a deeper

understanding of the key causal factors and processes involve in reform over

time as well as some of the basic systemic issues that can potentially complicate

the implementation of reform.

38
 World Bank 14(2006) examines services delivery system in India, focusing

especially on specific innovations in service delivery across India, the study

identifies common factors underlying their success. In doing so, it highlight the

efficacy of six instruments to improve service delivery-fostering competition,

simplifying transactions, restructuring agency processes, decentralization,

building broad political support for programme delivery and strengthening

accountability mechanisms. Covering a range of services and cases-such as

ITC’s e-Chaupal, Madhya Pradesh’s effort to decentralize teacher management,

Karnataka’s road transport corporation, Andhra Pradesh’s eSeva and Tamil

Nadu’s success in improving human development outcomes-the study draws

lessons that can help improve service delivery across sectors and facilitate the

transplanting of success stories to other settings.

Agnathevar Bakaran & Mammo Muchie15 (2006) explains the impressive

advances of information and communication technologies (ICT) in some Asian

counties have led some people to proclaim a fundamental change in the world

economy. It is still relatively difficult to find reliable information about the changes

taking place in China or any other developing country. One of the many good

features of this evaluation is that it takes into account the specific relationship of

ICT with the wider social and economic system and the national system of

innovation of each country. It give insight into the role of ICT and ICT policy in the

most important emerging economies in the world especially India.

Srinath Srinivasa 16(2006) stressed on te theme of power and power laws

in particulars since it is these laws that will govern how the internet and

39
information and communication technology are used and abused. The author

investigates properties of frictionless, non-linear systems and shows how

information affects us in a variety of ways.

Tom J. van Weert & Arthur Tatnall (2005)17 projects international trends

are observed in the following areas: learning in real-life situations; development

of relationships with business and industry; and new forms of assessment. The

papers in this book present a cross-section of issues in real –life learning in

which Information and Communication Technology (ICT) plays an important role.

Some of the issues covered include: education models for real-life learning

enabled by ICT; effective organization of a real-life learning environment; the

changing role of the student; the changing role of educational institutions and

their relationship with business and industry; the changing role of teachers and

their use of ICT; and management of ICT rich education change.

R.K. Bagga, Kenneth Keniston & Rohit Raj Mathur 18 (2005) examined

governance challenges and the pitfalls of ICT applications; citizen-centric

governance; cyber laws and their implementation; the role of ICT in combating

corruption; technological and human readiness to make e-governance a reality;

conceptualizing successful ICT project for everyone; and ICT application in

agriculture and in harnessing social capital and ensuring financial returns.

Madanmohan & Lunita endoza 19 (2005) explains the flavour and

implications of these fast paced developments by providing a comprehensive,

detailed and insightful look at the wireless scenario in the Asia-Pacific. It charts

the growth of the wireless ecosystem across the region, highlights the valuable

40
lessons learned by the pioneers, and contextualizes these themes with

developments in other parts of the world including the US, Europe and India.

James S.L. Yong 20 (2005) explains in detail about Brunei, China, Hon

Kong, India, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.

The author stresses on how each government administration has chosen to

pursue their e-Government initiatives, extensive research and interviews with

government leaders and practitioner has been done in context to e-governance.

Asian Development Bank 21 (2005) elaborates e-government strategy,

and is rapidly expanding the use of ICT in governance by establishing online

public services and digital collaboration between government ministries.

However, successful implementation of e-government remains a challenge. The

Regional Workshop on Designing E-government for the poor assisted the

participants to gain a better understanding of e-government, and building

capacity for the planning and implementing e-government for the poor.

Richard Heeks 22(2005) focuses on the implementation of e-government

systems. It explores activities such as feasibility studies, system analysis, system

design, construction and marketing. The author explains e-government

management issues such as the management strategy and projects; quality;

people, money and policies; and dealing with political and ethical challenges.

Sghirin Madon 23(2005) representing a significant step forward in the

development of critical perspectives on the IS field, the Handbook draws together

original contributions from leading authors who offer alternative sto the current

mainstream approaches to IS research. In order to accommodated the various

41
strands of critical understaidng, a broad range of views and theoretical

standpoints are encompassed, thereby combining theory with practical

applications, and offering a valuable source of reference for this emerging are of

research especially a research paper on e-government in India.

United Nations24 (2005)illustrates good practice, including case studies

from China, India, Malaysia, Nepal and Thiland, relating to initiatives to expand

ICT infrastructure capacity to promote access to ICT for all rural and poor people

with the countries of the Asia and pacific region. These case studies include

descriptions of appropriate technology, financial mechanisms, related ICT

policies and the role of key stakeholders.

Sumit Ropy25 (2005) emphasizes that increasingly non state institutions,

as opposed to the state, are transforming economies. The author also highlights

the critical need for development regions to shapes ICT which can stimulate

development and usher in the information age. Enabling instant communication

over vast distances and in real time, ICT has far-reaching implications for

transnational relationships.

Commonwealth Secretariat26 (2004) illustrates various civil serives, which

have undergone redical change in scope, organization and approach rendering a

revision timely. These re-issued Country Profiles continue to be an accessible

and valuable source of reference which attempt to both describe and analyze the

often tumultuous and controversial public sector reforms which have taken place

in contributing countries since 1995.

42
 Mark Turner and David Hulme 27 (2004) provide a comprehensive

introduction to the public policy process and public management in development

countries. The authors review the public management system in the developing

world with varied case studies which includes the use of Information and

communication Technologies for the help of the poor.

Economic and Social Commission for Asia28 (2004) focuses on the

Building e-Community Centres for Rural Development Workshop co-organized

by UNESCAP and Asian Development Bank Institute, which examined the

various issues relted to Community e-Centre in the Asia and the Pacific region.

The purpose is to share good practices and provide models for successful

development and operation of these centres.

Subhash C. Bhatnagar29 (2004) provides key insights and practical

guidelines on: ways to successfully implement e-government projects; selecting

application areas, project designs, strategies and their implementation; benefits

and impact of e-government on public sector reform, poverty reduction and

empowerment methodology for evaluating e-government projects; and overall

strategy formulation.

Mark Warschauer30 (2004) examines the ways in which differeing access

to technology contributes to social and economic stratification or inclusion. The

author takes a global perspective, presenting case studies from developed and

developing counties, including Brazil China, Egypt, India, and the United states.

Kenneth Keniston & Deepak Kumar 31 (2004) examines at length the

history, nature and aspects related to the digital divide’ in India. It has examined

43
in detail the social, economic and political aspects affecting it. Alongside the

optimism and hype surrounding the information age, it was noted by the authors

that a vast majority of the people remained untouched by this revolution. A ‘digital

divide’ come to be recognized between the rich an the powerful, which are part of

the information age and the poor and powerless, which are not.

Simon Tay & Maria Seda 32 (2003) has identified strategies and sharing

experiences of countries raging from Indonesia and Thailand to Honk Kong and

Singapore. It would be a valuable resources for counter-corruption agencies and

government leaders, examining common challenges and shared experiences,

and laying of tested strategies and solutions.

Karen Mossberger, Caroline J. Tolbert & Mary Stansbury33 (2003)

explained “digital divide”—which falls between those who have and can afford

the latest in technological tools and those who have neither in our society—is

indisputable. “Virtual Inequality redefines the issue as it explores the cascades of

that divide, which involve access, skill, political participation, as well as the

obvious economics. Computer and internet access are insufficient without the sill

to use the technology, and economic opportunity and political participation

provide primary justification for realizing that this inequality is a public problem

and not simply a matter of private misfortune.

Jeffrey James 34 (2003) examines the global digital divide- the extent to

which information technology is benefiting developed as opposed to developing

counties – has already established itself as the single most pervasive theme of

the twenty-first century. The author explores some of the ways in which this

44
divide can be overcome both within and between nations. Employing a rigorous

analytical framework, the author bases his analysis on the concept of

international technological dualism.

James S. L. Yong 35 (2003) examines e-government in Asia, with special

reference to nine economies Brunei, China, Hong Kong, India, South Korea,

Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand and to understand how each

government administration has chosen to pursue their e-government initiatives.

The material is based on extensive research and interviews with government

leaders and practitioners.

A. Kumar 36 (2002) explains the growth of Computers and the Information

explosion are today relatives in our social and economic institutions. The purpose

is to provide fundamental knowledge to enable one to participate in the

development and use of information systems in modern organizations. The

author elucidates variety of information requirements and the sophisticated ways

in which these requirements are satisfied in modern organizations.

Vivek Sood 37 (2001) stresses upon the need of cyber laws in the new era

of cybernetic state as there are number of violations occurring as well as public

servants are being trained to impart good governance through e-governance.

The e-governance will remove the red tapism occurring in the day to day

functioning of the government offices as well as reduce corruption as there would

be more transparency.

Akshay Joshi 38 (2001) provides a holistic analysis of the impact of the

information revolution on the three pillars of national power: political, economic

45
and military power. The book concludes that India can claim real success in

exploiting the information revolution only if ti can bridge the digital divide.

Therefore, it is important to use IT for developmental purposes.

Srinivas R Melkote and Sandhya Rao 39 (2001) examines the role of the

communication and presents fresh perspective and approaches to understanding

communication as well as the implications of the ever-changing and regional

communication landscapes.

Arvind Singhal and Everett M Rogers40 (2001) explain the journey of

Indian from bullock carts to Cyber Marts. It includes the human Endeavour and

give important statistical information with a multi dimensional view of the

revolution. It discusses the India’s path to development through normalization, in

which new communication technologies are harnessed for socio-economic

advancement.

Subhash Bhatnagar & Robert Schwae 41 (2000) traces the history of ICT

use in rural India, examines some of the problems that have afflicted the

implementation of rural development programmes, at the same time showing

how ICT application could help overcome them, assesses the early efforts in ICT

use, proposes a scheme by which to classify ICT applications.

Objectives of the Study

46
 In benchmarking state initiatives, four independent frameworks of analysis

seem possible. These frameworks have been presented as possible ways to look

at government’s progress and are exploratory.

Assessing the e-readiness of Punjab state and Chandigarh in Information and

communication technology.

Assessing the stated commitment through IT policy and actual application by

governments of ICT tools toward reaching development goals.

Applying the lens of good vovernance—the cornerstones of equity, accountability,

transparency, participation, responsiveness, strategic vision, and rule of law- to

what is happening on the ground.

Research Methodology
For completing the research works both primary and secondary data will

be taped. Interview method/ Questionnaire method will be applied to elicit views

of selected sample of citizens belonging to various fields including Agriculturist,

Government officer, Teachers, Businessmen, rural population including illiterate

and officers working on behalf on the administration as well as private partners in

the e-governance programmes in Pujab.

The selected sample will include the elected members of parliament and

state legislative assembly of Punjab through random sampling.; A random

sample of offices belonging to All India Servies (IAS), Punjab Civil Services

47
(PCS), PUNJAB INFOTECH, Department of Information Technology (DIT) and

National Informatics Center (NIC) Punjab region, who are actively participating in

the policy making and implementing the information and communication

technology programmes in Punjab for effect e-government, will be taken.

Tentative Cauterization
1. Introduction

2. E-governance Initiatives in India

3. E-governance in Punjab and Chandigarh: Initiatives and its

implementation.

4. Role of information and communication technology in e-governance

and its impact and citizens.

5. Conclusion.

48
 CHAPPTER-2

e-GOVERNANCE INITIATIVES

IN INDIA

Reinventing public institutions is Herculean work. To succeed, you must

find strategies that set off chain reactions in your organization or system,

dominoes that will set all others falling. In a phrase, you must be strategic. By

strategy, does not mean detailed plans. There are no algorithms to follow to

reinvent government, no step-by-step progression to which you must slavishly

49
adhere. The process is not linear, and it is certainly not orderly. Things rarely go

as planned; re-inventors must constantly adjust their approaches in response to

the resistance and opportunities they encounter. Rather, by strategy, I mean the

used of key leverage points to make fundamental changes that ripple throughout

the bureaucracy, changing everything else. Reinvention is large-scale combat. It

requires intense, prolonged struggle in the political arena, in the institutions of

government, and in the community and society. Given the enormity of the task

and the resistance that must be overcome, the re-inventor’s challenge is to

leverage small resource into big changes. Being strategic means using the levels

available to you to change the underlying dynamics in a system; in a way that

changes everyone’s behavior.

To use but one example for former British Prime Minister Margaret

Thatcher did not start out with a full-blown strategy to reinvent the British state,

She came into office in 1979 determined to make it smaller, privatize many

functions, and force the bureaucrats to be more efficient. But unlike her American

counterpart, Ronald Reaga, she learned from the failure of her “jam the

bureaucrats” approach. She also had more time in office. In her third term, she

began to apply a consistent philosophy of extending choice and competition to

public services and decentralizing authority so providers had the flexibility to

respond to their customers’ needs.

Information & Communication Technology

50
 “ICTs (Information and Communication Technology) are effectively

showing new dimensions to old institutional setups. There is a reinforced thrust

for an informed and participatory citizenry for efficient e-governance. It goes

without saying that impact of ICT on institutional changes is fast spreading

across the boundaries of social and political arrangements of societies.”

When computers were first developed around sixty years back, the

primary purposes for which they were used were scientific computing and

cryptanalysis (i.e. breaking codes used by enemy forces in communication)

during the Second World War. With the commercial availability computers and

the realization that computers could be used for other applications, banks and

insurance companies also started using these for speeding up their operations.

When mainframe computers started gaining popularity in the late 1950s

and 1960s, many of the governments round the world also started using these for

imporoving their efficiency. The typical applications included analyzing census

data, personnel management, land records, project monitoring, accounts,

inventory control and economic modeling. These were mostly installed in the

headquarters of department with centralized computing facilities, requiring large

investments and were expensive to maintain.

Over the last few decades, the dovernment of relatively inexpensive

personal computer which can communicate with each other through the Internet

has opended up near vistas for widespread application in almost every field of

human activity. The developed countries have already made considerable

progress in widespread use of information technology (IT) in increasing the

51
efficiency of operations of government machinery and in making it much easier

for citizens to access information and interact with government. It is only during

the last few years that the developing counties have started exploring the great

potential of IT in improving the quality of governance.

E-Governance is the application of Information and Communication

Technology (ICT) for delivering Government Services, exchange of information,

communication transactions integration various stand-alone systems and

services between Government and Citizens (G@C), Government and Business

(G2B) as well as back office processes and interactions within the entire

government frame work. Through the e-Governance, the Government services

will be made available to the citizens in a convenient, efficient and transparent

manner. The government being the services provider, it is important to motivate

the employees for delivering the services through ICT. To achieve this, the

Government employees are being trained on technology and started realizing the

advantage of ICT. The aim is to make them through with e-Governance

applications and responsive to the technology driven administration.

The potential of ICT in impacting the live of rural poor in a variety of ways

is now being widely recognized. Recognition of the potential comes from a few

successful tele-center pilots in some developed and developing countries.1 Many

e-government applications demonstrate the efficiency with which services can be

delivered to the rural poor.2

52
e-districts

West Godavri-Rural e-Seva

Project Objective: Establish a sustainable service delivery model, wherein the

government services are delivered to the citizen through a single window system,

accessible at close proximity.

Value to Citizen: (a) Services delivery centre located at close proximity to the

citizen thereby enhancing convenience (b) Reduce citizen interaction with the

Government functionary / office for a service and c) Evolve these e-Seva centre

into single stop shops for other routine citizen needs.

Services Charges

Issue of Certificates: Caste, Income, Rs. 10

Residence, Integrated
Posting of Grievances Rs. 5
Download of applications/ static Rs. 2

information like mandi rates

Acceptance of electricity bill payments Rs. 2 per bill
Computer aided education in Rs. 2 per child per month

53
collaboration with Azim Premji

Foundation by designating the local

schools to the collocated e-Seva center

Co-location of general facilities like,

photocopying, fax/STD/ISD, internet

Browsing lamination and binding works

etc to augment the revenue of the

center

Implementation Highlight:

 Front-end automation where services requests are acdepted.

 As the citizen kiosk was critical to success, effective model was envisaged

and enforced without leaving this to the choice of the private entrepreneur.

46 rural e-Seva centers at the rate of one per Mandal was established and

augmented by another 150 RSDPs across the district.

 Minimal computerization of the backend departments as the project did

not do away with the manual backend processing and the paper work

involve.

 As services are completely data driven, the onus was on the citizen to

obtain necessary authorization of basic data that was entered into the

MPHS database, if the same was not available.

54
  Project was conceived in Sep 2002 and the first version of the model

started working from Jan 2003 with a limited set of services. Application

was developed by NIC and is being supported and maintained by NIC.

 Coordination Committee was formed to work out the financial scheme,

facilitate the establishment of kiosks and provide transparency.

Success factors

 Availability of certified and department owned MPHS data has alleviated

challenges like backend enablement, process reengineering and change

management.

 Championing of the entire initiative from visioning to implementation by the

District Collector leveraged the necessary support from all quarters and

ensured sustainability.

 Empowerment of the Mandal Revenue offices (Mandal is a revenue

administration unit at par with Block in other states) for delivery of

services related to the Revenue Department.

 Involvement of key stakeholders such as self-help groups and leveraging

subsidies from other programmes to provide financial viability to the

establishment of the initial infrastructure.

 Citizen awareness and appreciation of the services had put the onus on

the department to sustain the services levels and explore enhancements.

55
  The maturity of service delivery ensures sustenance of te processes and

delivery model.

Thiruvarur-e-district

Value to Citizen

 The entire land record transactions have been made online thus providing

up-to-date electronics records related to land purchase recorded in the

Taluk and village land record registers.

 Birth and death certificates provided with 10 minutes for the period 1997-

2001.

 The acknowledgement and follow-up of Public grievance redressal

mechanism was facilitated through a software application to enable citizen

response within two week.

 Prompt dispatch of Old Age Pensions (OAP) to beneficiaries within the

first week of each month.

 Disbursal of scholarships to eligible Pre & Post Matric students within one

week after receipt of fund allocation from Government.

 Annual accounts settlement (Jamabanthi) completed on time, every time.

 Monitoring of development programmes.

Services Charges Rs.

56
Mutation related documents for land 20

purchases at Taluk and village

Cultivation and harves certificates 20

(Adangal extract) (Issue of RoR)

Other land record extract 10
Issue of certificates/ cards 10
Citizen Grievance redressal Nil
Social Welfare Scheme (Pensions and Nil

Scholarships)

57
Implementation Highlights

 The functional specifications and solution development was carried out

under the personal initiative of the then District Collector and his team.

 The district had set up a software development centre in the DC’s office,

employing over 30 outside software professionals. Software was

developed approximately in 12 months.

 Staff training was provided at the centralized training facility on a

continuous basis and majority of the training sessions ware conducted by

the senior officials including the District Collector himself.

 To administer the Taluk/ Block computer systems, clerical grade

employees from each of the 20 offices volunteered to undergo training to

act as software administrators. Two staff members per office were

indetified for intensive training on serve administration.

 Funds ware mobilized from various sources and schemes such as

Members of Parliament Local area development Programe (MPLADP) and

MLA Constituency development fund. No State support was provided.

Total funding for this project was Rs. 2 Cr for infrastructure; development

and associated tools were provided gratis by a leading IT vendor, IBM.

Success factors.

1. of all the model districts visited, Thiruvarur system seems to be the

most comprehensive in terms of functional coverage. The e-

58
 Governance applications are characterized by simplicity and

effectiveness which is a clear reflection of clarity in Requirements.

2. Designing a roject Plan with well defined milestones is necessary for

successful e-Governance outcomes including development and

training. The collector was the de facto Project Champion.

3. Continuity of Financial Support is essential for implementation of e-

district. Currently there is an urgent requirement for up gradation of the

software and computing infrastructure for up gradation of the software

and computing infrastructure that have hithereto become obsolete and

to support software maintenance.

4. Data related to various applications were build ground-up through

actual involvement of the officials which have been critical from the

standpoint of data quality and ownership of data. But there are no

standards governing data that would be a key requirement for building

capacity/ replication.

5. To manage change effectively (a) a permanent facility for training of

users was established at the collectorate and (b) a Bilingual database

interface (Tamil/English) was put in place.

6. Creation of Public Awareness through public grievance redressal

camps. Eight such camps were conducted in wedding halls and about

3055 citizens were provided on-the-sport sanctions for various

requirements.

59
Rural development Initiatives
Since time immemorial, India has been a land of village communities. With

more than 75 percent people living in rural areas, no development can be

successful unless in focuses on rural areas and rural people. In 1986, NIC

introduced IT to facilitate planning, monitoring and exchange of information

between various agencies in the area of Rural Development administration.

RuralSoft
Rural Soft is a solution that helps in monitoring the monthly progress of

various poverty alleviation schemes sponsored by MoRD and SRDs. Rural Soft3

is, in fact, the more sophisticated version of what was popularly known as CRISP

software, undertaken under the Computerized Rural Information System.

Project (CRISP), launched by MoRD, as early as 1986. The software was

designed and developed by NIC and distributed to all State Rural Department.

Since then, the software has responded to may changes in the domain as well as

technology. It finally evolved to what is today known as Rural Soft.

Below Poverty Line Survey Computerization

BPL survey is conducted every five years to capture the information

regarding families below poverty line. The survey is conducted as per directions

from the department. The survey data captured through BPL survey software4 is

60
used by planners in Ministry of Rural Development and State rural development,

by citizens (Particularly, the rural poor) to see if they are part of the BPL list and

hence eligible for various benefits offered by the government and by many other

departments of the Central and State Government.

Panchayati Raj Informatics5

The Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) introduced through the 73 rd

Amendment Act, 1992 was a landmark in decentralized development as it

envisions grass root people’s participation in the process of planning, decision

making, implementation and delivery. The Ministry of Panchayati Raj, launched a

National Panchayat Portal (NPP) (http://panchayat.nic.in) in December 2004,

which contains a portal framework of State PR, all zilla Parishads, all Block

Panchayats and all Village Panachayats in the country with the web-site of the

ministry acting as the gateway home page.

PriaSoft-Panchayati Raj Administration Software

PriaSoft6, is umbrella software catering to the administrative needs of

PRIs and also serving the common man. This software solution also helps in

monitoring the accounts of Panchayati Raj Institutions by State RD/MoRD and

Comptroller & Auditor General (CAG) Office, thereby bringing about transparency

61
in Panchyati Raj accounting. The receipts/ expenditure details are available on

the web for all, including village citizens. Current implementations of PriaSoft

include:

PriaSoft- (Panchlekha – Madhya Pradesh, Orissa =

http://ori.nic.in/priasoft, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh) - for Accounting PriaSoft-

Aasthi (Karnataka) Property Tax module for Gram Panchayats PriaSoft- e-

Panchayat (Andhra Pradesh) - Internet based services for Birth and Death

Registrations, House Tax Assessment Collections, Trade Licenses, Old Age

Pensions, works Monitoring, Financial Accounting, MIS for Panchayat

Administration are all being executed in the computerized e-Panchayat system.

Additional services such as market prices and agricultural extension advice will

also be provided to the citizens of the village from e-Panchayat. This project is

being implemented in Ramchandrapuram Gram Panchayat, Denduluru,

Pedapadu in West Godavari District, Anantapur Rural Village Panchayat.

This project is going to be extended to all villages in Andhra Pradesh7 in

phased manner and can also be extended to other States by appropriate

adaptation.

Gyandoot
The facility of internet in Dhar8 district which is connecting rural cyber

cafes, is catering to the every day needs of the masses.

62
 The web site of GYANDOOT is an extension of Gyandoot internet, for

giving global access. Some of the services provided to rural people through

kiosks set up in the villages of the rural district include Commodity/ Mandi

Marketing Information System, Income Certificate, Domicile Certificate (mool

niwas), Caste Certificate, Driving License, Rural matrimonial (Vivah Sambandh),

rural Market (Gaon ka Bazaar), Rural News Paper (Gram Samachar) Advisory

module (Salakhar), E-education Employment news etc.

SERVICES
In all the Soochanalaya9 villages, three meetings each were organized

with the villagers where in-depth participatory appraisal was dopne. The design

of the services provided was a result of this interactive exercise and was based

upon the advice and the felt needs of the villagers. In these meeting, it was

learned thatr due to lack of information regarding the proper mandi rates not only

in the local mandis but in the benchmark mandis (where the local mandi trader

sells his own purchases), the farmers are unable to get the best price for their

agricultural produce. Villagers also informed that copies of land records are

difficult to obtain since the patwari is often on tour and one patwari is responsible

for several villages. The villager needing a copy of the land records has to go out

in search of the partwari who may or may no tbe available on that particular day

at his headquarters. For small complaints or for giving applications, people had to

63
go to Block, Tahsil or District headquarters which resulted in waste of time,

money and potential livelihood earnings.

From the Soohanalayas, rates of grains and vegetables of nearly a dozen

mandis, copies of revenue maps or khasras or B1 may be obtained. In addition,

income certificates, caste certificates, domicile certificates, demarcation

applications, applications for obtaining landholders’ loan passbook (rin pustika)

etc. may be sent on-line. On the preparation of the desired certificate/ rin pustika,

the information will be sent through email to the concerned Soochanalaya. These

can be prepared in a maximum period of 10 days although the attempt will be to

provide them much earlier. Complaints regarding Government schemes/

programmes/ institutions/ employees may also be sent through the net and in a

maximum period of seven days, preferably less, reply regarding their disposal will

be sent back to the concerned Soochanalaya10.

Gram Daak: emailing software which is all set to become the Hotmail for

villagers. Working in their local language, it has all the features and facilities of a

state of the art web based email. In addition to this, Gram Daak also has a client

version which works locally at the Gyandoot Soochanalayas end has message

queuing facility. One getting connected it transfers all the mails in the out box to

the Gyandoot server and receives the incoming ones stored therein. This

reduces the burden on the perennially disturbed telephone connectivity.

64
Expansion in availability of rates for more mandis and more

crops: State Mandi Board has begin supplying rates of wheat on the Gyandoot

internet for another 23 mandis over and above the initial 13 mandis whose rates

were provided earlier for varieties and crops. The Board will be adding

information of rates of other varieties/ crops also soon for the new 23 mandis.

Rates of 9 more varieties/ crops have been added over and above the initial 15.

Thus, rates of 24 crops/ varieties form 13 mandis and rate of wheat from 36

mandis are now available.

Government sponsored loan project preparation and

submission: Villagers who seek government sponsored loans may gent a

project report prepared for occupations in the approved shelf of loan projects at

the nearyby Soochanalaya as and submit them their itself with necessary

supporting documents for forwarding to banks/lending agency in case of the

Swarnjayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana (SGSY- the recast IRDP). The citizen need

not hunt professionals for project preparation or chase files from extension

workers to desks, officies and sponsoring committees. The correct project may

be prepared, approved and forwarded to the bank/lening agencies with reply

assured within two week by visiting a Soochanalayas for a modest for a modest

fixed fee of Rs. 25. It is planned to cover all other government loan schemes too.

Shelf of 96 projects is already available on the internet.

65
  Information regarding government programmes: Detailed

information regarding over a hundred government programmes is now

available on the Gyandoot intranet.

 Mandi Information Centre11:- From 22nd June Dhamnod mandi has been

linked with gyandoot. Besides hourly only mandi rates it will provide loacal

weather report and information/ documentaries of new techniques and

technologies in agriculture/ horticulture or allied activity will be available.

The farmers can see them from a 29” television put up in the centre of

mandi. It is estimated that around 800-1000 farmers will be benefited from

this facility every day. The project will eventually link and create similar

facility in Dhar, Badnawar and Rajgarh mandi as well.

 Vaivahiak: An online matrimonial application for the villagers to choose

the right match for a prospective birde/groom. Every every entry from a

Soochanalaya by a villager gets added on to a centralized Dhar database

which when searched would provide accurate results. The program has

been generatd by keeping the parameters of the villages in mind. The

Patidar and Jain samaj have already agreed to place their matrimonial

here.

“Gyandoot”, out model for e-government pioneered in Dhar district,

provides over 17 citizen services through kiosks amanaged by entrepreneurs

based on the Internet. This has now been replicated in 12 more districts. It also

won the Stockholm Challenge Award. Out efforts view IT as one fundamentally

intended to improve basic services for the average citizen 12.

66
Bhoomi
Bhoomi project is an attempt made by Karnataka State Government for

Computerization of Land Records. This project is sponsored jointly by Ministry of

Rural Development, Government of India and State Government of Karnataka.

Under the Bhoomi E-Governance project all 20 million land records of 6.7 million

land owners in 176 taluks of Karnataka have been computerized. This systems

works with the software called “BHOOMI” designed fully in-house by National

Informatics Center, Bangalore 13.

Important Features of BHOOMI

 This software provides for printing of land records as and when required.

 It incorporates process of online updation to ensure that the RTCs,

provided to the farmers are in sync with the time.

 All the mutations to the land records database are done on the computer

itself so as to ensure that data on computer remain current with time.

 It incorporates the state of the art bio-logon metrics system from Compaq,

which authenticates various users on the Bhoomi software on the basis of

fingerprints. This ensures that nobody can hack the system by imitating

other users.

 This software also has the provision of scanning of original mutation

orders of the revenue inspector (who is the authorized person to pass

orders in the mutations in the field) and notices served on interested

67
 parties. Both documents are scanned to ensure that not only responsibility

can be fizzed on Officials by showing the original documents signed by

them but also to ensure that the interested parties do not claim in the court

that they were not served with the notice before effecting the mutation.

 The software enables the administrators to generate various reports

based on type of soil, land holding size, type of crops grown etc. this

Information would enable administrators to take informed policy

decision14.

Components of Bhoomi

 There are 3 main components in Bhoomi System.

 The computer centre where mutation and updation are one in online

fashion. It includes finger print authentication and scanning of important

documents to ensure robust and secured system. Most of the components

of the Computer Centre are funded under the Central Scheme.

 Land Record kiosk from where the farmers can collect the copy of their

record by paying Rs. 15. They can also lodge request for mutation to their

land records. The Kiosk is fully funded by State Government.

 Touch Screen Kiosk where farmers can see their land related information

without any body’s intervention or help.

68
Benfits of Bhoomi

 Farmers

Farmers can quickly get their land records from Kiosks and are protected

from harassment and extortion.

As against time delay of 3 to 30 days they now get their records in less

than 2 minutes. No overhead cost is to be incurred. No application is required to

be submitted at the kiosk. The records are authentic and legible. Use of

biometrics authentication system for updation of records have freed farmers form

the worry of probable manipulation of their recrds by some times some

unscrupulous officials.

Reduction in processing time for mutation

Farmers can lodge application for mutation (change in land title) to their

land records at the mutation kiosks, get acknowledgement for the same and can

monitor the progress using touch screen kiosks available in some Bhoomi

centers. They would then get their updated land record in a fixed time frame

without the need of approaching any authority. As against earlier time. Of 70-200

days, mutation would now require less than 35 days.

Online tracking of mutation status.

Farmers can also get the official status report of their request for mutation

which would let them know the stage at which their request is pending. This

69
status report would help them in enforcing their right of getting the record

mutated in the prescribed time.

Easy access to Farm Credit

Online connectivity to banks would ensure farm crdit to farmers in less

than 5 days as against 25-30 days in manual system.

Ease in case of legal matters.

It would be easier for the farmers to pursue land related litigation in the

court.

Administrators
Ease of maintenance and updation of land records docments.

In manual system land records updation used to get delayed by as high as

1-2 years in some cases. Now it would always be in sync with time.

Quick and easy access to Land records.

Support for development programs, based on valuable land records data

like various crops grown in a village or a sub district, the fertilizers and pesticide

requirement in a season etc to Departments like Agriculture, Industries and

70
Planning. Such data in earlier system became available to departments only after

2-3 years. It is now available almost immediately.

Quick and easy access to Land records for analysis purpose.

Support for development programs, based on valuable land records data

like various crops grown in a village or a sub district, the fertilizers and pesticide

requirement in a season etc to Departments like Agriculture, Industries and

Planning. Such data in earlier system became available to departments only after

2-3 years. It is now available almost immediately.

Ease of monitoring Government Lands.

Monitoring of Government lands and prevention of their encroachments.

Lack of monitoring had costed a reported loss of Rs. 25 billion to State

Government by way of officials tampering with records.

 Others

For Financial Institutions, Online Farm credit related activities.

Online connectivity to financial institutions would help banks in planning

for their farm credit related activities. In manual system they worked on 2 years

old data or just guessed them farm sector requirement.

Information availability for Private Sector.

71
 The Department of Revenue in Karnataka has computerized 20 million

records of land ownership of 6.7 million farmers. In the manual system, land

records were maintained by 9.000 Village Accountants, each serving a cluster of

3-4 villagers. Farmers had to pay bribes and make several visits to the

accountant (took3-30 days) to get a copy of the RTC—a document needed

primarily for obtaining bank loans. Land records in the custody of Village

Accountants were not open for public scrutiny. Mutation requests15 had to be

field with the Village Accountant. A Revenue Inspector was authorized to update

the record after a process of enquiry spanning 30 days. In practice, however, it

could take 1-2 years for the records to be updated.

Now a signed copy of the RTC can be obtained online by providing the name of

the owner or plot number at computerized Bhoomi kiosks in 187 taluk offices, for

a fee of Rs. 15. A second computer screen faces the clients to enable them to

see the transaction being performed. A farmer can file a mutation request at the

kiosk and check the status on a Touch Screen provided on a plot basis in some

kiosks. If the revenue inspector does not complete the mutation within 45 days, a

farmer can now approach a second person in the district who has been

designated to authorize a mutation. Now, mutation requests are to be handled

strictly on a frist-come-first-served basis. These measures limit opportunities for

collecting bribes. Operators of the computerized system are made accountable

for their decisions and actions by using a bio-login system that authenticates

every log-in through a thumb print. In the last one year nearly 90,000 mutation

72
requests have been made and the monthly collection of fee has varied from Rs.

7.9 million to Rs. 14.4 million 16.

Data on crop survey is currently collected manually and updated I the

taluka database in a batch mode three times a year. In a pilot experiment, a

locally designed handheld computer (Simputer) has been provided to 200 village

accountants for capturing the crop data live in the field. Village Accountants have

found it easy to learn the operations of the Simputer. Bhoomi demonstrates the

benefits of making government records more open so that citizens are

empowered to challenge arbitrary action. It also illustrates how automation can

be used to take discretion away from civil servants at operating levels.

Independent evaluation studies have shown that Bhoomi has significantly

reduced corruption and improved service delivery.

PRAGATI
NIC, Assam State Centre has designed and developed, ‘PRAGATI’ – an

umbrella of e- Governance application for implementation in the district

administrations’ officers of government of Assam17. it provides a useful and

standard package of e-Governance applications for efficient delivery of services

in several areas of district administration.

e-PANCHAYAT- Panchayat Raj the e-way

73
 e-Panchayat is a comprehensive suite of Panchayat application

conceptualized, designed and developed by NIC Andhra Pradesh, to effectively

solve the information management problems at the village level. As a part of its

e-Governance initiatives, e Panchayat has been designed taking into

consideration all the information and knowledge management requirements in a

gram pancyahat. The 1992 Panchayat Raj Act of the central Government and the

success stories of the Gram Panchayats n various state in the country are taken

into consideration while developing e-Panchayat. The orders issued by the

Government of Andhra Pradesh regarding the Village Secretariats and the

functions of the village secretary besides the elected representatives of the

Grampanchayat are all considered in this package. Thus ePanchayat fits well

into the information systems at village level. E-Panchayat benefits the Citizens,

the Elected Representatives, the Gram Panchayat and other village level

officials, the Administrators and Planners at the district and state level, also

knowledge workers and the researchers. Separate user centric modules are

made available, taking into consideration the requirement of these main stake

holders. Information on different aspect is made available to the citizen in the

purview of Gram Panchayat to make the citizen empowered with knowledge,

through e pancyahat website. The Web site is an integrated environment of gram

panchayat providing access to the various functions carried out by gram

panchayat in offering citizen services and also aiding the local administration.

Downloading of application forms, information on citizen charter, Acts and

Government orders, panchayat profile, Government programs, Welfare schemes,

74
Development works, Status on applications submitted and tax dues, Grievance

registration and status enquiry, budget information and links to important sites.

The information services are available for functions such as Births and Deaths;

House Tax; Trade Licenses; Pension schemes; Works Land Records; Marriages;

etc.

LOKMITRA (Infotech for the Masses)

The Government of Himachal Pradesh has taken the benefits of “Using

Information Technology (IT) in Governance” at the doorstep of the general public,

especially those living in distant rural areas. This Web-site enable Government

Citizen Interface aims at making people aware of government policies and

programmes, and also providing an interface to interact with various government

functionaries. The NIC, Himachal Pradesh, has been identified as the E-

Governance Wing by the State government, for designing and developing

necessary software and implementing the project.

The project envisages various direct/ indirect social as well as economic

benefits to the rural masses such as:

 Better dissemination of government information at the remotest corner,

resulting in better awareness among rural masses about various

Government Schemes and bringing in transparency.

75
  Saving in time and cost of people visiting District headquarters time and

again for getting information, lodging complaints and inquiring their status

etc.

 Reduction in response time by the concerned departments and increase in

their accountability to people of the State.

 Virtual Extension Counters for the Government, by way of using these

Centers for getting the departmental Data entered and transmitted from

time to time.

 A platform for the people to interact with each other on mutual interest

e.g., matrimonial sales/ purchases etc.

 Additional income opportunities form Citizen Information Centers by using

them for General

 Training, Word Processing and Data Entry jobs, and extending Internet

Access.

 Employment generation by opening up on Citizen Information Centers

throughout the State in the private sector.

 Facilitating the growth of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) throughout the

State.

In order to visualize the concept, it was decided by the State Government

to implement the project on a pilot basis in one of the districts on Intranet.

Accordingly, the project was started on a pilot basis in district Hamirpur, funded

by NABARD, as the first IT- Project of any State Govt. funded under RIDF

76
scheme. The pilot peoject was formally launched by the Chief Minister of

Himachal Pradesh 18 on 08th May 2001.

A district wide Intranet was created, by setting-up the Control Room

(LokMitra Soochnalaya) in the Deputy Commissioner office at Hamirpur. The

District Administration, in consultation with the Zila Parishad and Panchayats,

identified 25 panchayats for setting up the Citizen Information Centres (LokMitra

Soochna Soochanalaya19 (control Room at the Deputy commissioner office,

Hamirpur).

Lokmitra Soochna Kendras

The Soochna Kendra (Citizen Information Centres) have been set up at 25

centrally located Panchayats. One unemployed youth has been sponsored by

each of the concerned Panchayat for these Centres, named as Soochaks. The

Soochaks have been provided with a Client Computer with a Printer, Modem and

UPS.

They ware also imparted necessary training at the district headquarters for

accessing and using LokMitra Sofware. The Soochaks are required to deposit a

security bond and fixed annual Registration charges with the district

administration. The Services offered in the pilot implementation of the project are

as follows: Classified complaints against the listed departments in a pre-defined

format. For these classified complaints, the concerned department within 10 days

assures a reply. Questions/ General Grievances from the given department,

which are not as Classified Complaints, are to be replied within 30 days.

77
Downloadable Forms the citizens need for various purposes e.g. driving license

form, forms for getting various subsidies, ration card form etc. Vacancies are

being publicized by various Government Department / Agencies, along with the

application forms. Tenders being floated by PWD, Municipal Committee, IPH,

DRDA etc. with complete job details, submission data, earnest money, cost of

work etc. Promotional Schemes from all Departments, with details e.g. how to

take benefit, Forms to be filled etc.

HIM-BHOOMI
Initially in a Pilot Project in District Kangra, the Software was developed in

Foxplux under UNIX. The computerization efforts involved were confined to

products of the Jamabandi (Records of Rights) in order to give copies. In the

twelve district of the state, the total numbers of tehsils are 109 and sub-division

50. Him-Bhoomi project has been implemented in 92 tehsil, Himris in 57 tehsils

and E Praman in 88 tehsils of the state.

Table: District wise current status 20

District Total number of E-Praman Him Himris

Bhoomi
Tehsils Sub Div. Tehsils
Bilaspur 4 2 2 4 2
Chamba 10 6 10 9 6
Hamirpur 6 3 5 6 1
Kangra 19 8 12 12 12
Kinnaur 6 3 6 6 0

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Kullu 6 3 6 5 1
Lahual- 3 3 3 3 2

Spiti
Mandi 16 6 11 16 6
Shimla 17 7 17 14 17
Sirmour 10 3 7 7 1
Solan 7 4 5 5 5
Una 5 2 4 5 4
State Total 109 50 88 92 57

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HIM-BHOOMI
Form the experience gained from the initial implementation in Kangra

Sirmaur district 21 of the state, comprehensive land records computerization

system was developed. Technically the improvement started with development of

the Software in Oracle 7.0 under UNIX instead of Foxplus under UNIX, because

Oracle was more powerful Sofware and also improved the security of the data so

essential to land records. The Software wa made more comprehensive by

including all the main land records. Separate Software modules were envisaged

for Shajra Nasb, Jamabandi and associated statement, Mutations, Khasra

Girdawari Agricultural statistics and Kisaan Pass Books etc. Under this software,

a Unique code is assigned to each individual appearing the extent of land

possessed, which could be a basis for many e-governance applications. In

addition to this, numerous inferences can be derived from analytical studies to be

carried out on the basis of this Unique Code. For instance, person claiming to be

a small farmer (but actually having scattered land at numerous locations) can be

easily identified. Similarly, extent of fragmentation of land and its impact on yield

over the decades can be quantified. Moreover, a person enjoying different

statuses illegally (e.g. a tenant and landowner at the same time) can be

identified. This software facilitates mutation entry and generation of Nakal and

Jamabandi. This software createds a complete MIS as it encompasses Minor

Irrigation Census, Agriculture Census details there by helping the Department in

smooth conduct of irrigation & agriculture census which are conducted after

80
every five years. This may lead to substantial saving of effort and resources as

much of the information related to it can be extracted from Him Bhoomi

databases. In addition to it the new technology has helped in creating Revenue

village code same as the census village code, hence, all the data can be

correlated with the Land Records database to carry out various even micro level

studies down to the individual level 22. This has helped in getting revenue

documents within a shorter possible time as earlier 3-4 months were taken to get

the same and made it cost effective.

Him Bhoomi Modules

The HimBhoomi software has different modules viz. Gram Nideshika23,

HimBhoomi-LaPort Module, imBhoomi-Mutation module and HimBhoomi-ROR

(Nakal) Distribution Module. This software has used the old traditional

Terminology viz. Khewat Number, Khatoni Number, Khasra Number, Min &

Salam, Mortgage, Awaal/ Doaym/ Soyam.

Himris
The power of sub registrars have been vested in Naib-Tehsildar. The

landholders leaving in far flung areas come to offices after spending hours to get

as many service at the same time from a single trip. With the introduction of

computerization of land records since 2005, e-governance related services,

81
including certificates of different kinds issued on the spot and thus the whole

process is run through Property Registration software24.

Objectives

The underline concept of implementing Himris, to provide benefit of ICT in

the revenue system with following objectives:

 To provide timely and efficient service to the people in a effeicient and

transparent manner

 Enforce the changes in the system uniformly.

 Tapping of leakages in the revenue to due under value of rates of stamp

duty and registration.

 Better services to the citizens by providing them spot registration and

single window service.

 Prevention of frauds like impersonation, professional witness and proxies

by capturing of photographs of all the parties and witness on the spot.

 Better monitoring of revenue collection, evaluation and implementation of

policies and programme of the govt besides replacing non-uniform, person

specific processes.

E-Praman
Various types of certificates viz. Bona fide Certificate, Rural Area

Certificate, Indigent (Needy Person) Certificate, Domicile Certificate, Agriculturist

82
Certificate, Character Certificate, SC/ST Certificate, Dogra Class, Minority

Community, Other Backward Class Certificate, Income Certificate, Non-

Employment, Backward Area Certificate and Legal Heir are issued by all the

tehsildar and sub-divisional magistrate offices. To make the availability of these

certificates easier, E-Praman has been introduced in Himachal Pradesh since

2005. This ICT system has helped the citizens to get the same easily and thereby

the state has also generated revenue on account of it. Also the Tehsil centre are

becoming hub of e-governance centres where in various services like issuance of

RoR Nakal, property registration are going on, it seemed appropriate to expand

the scope of services from the Tehsil centres so that in one visit citizen may get

as many services as possible. Also in 29 sub-divisions ‘Pehal’25 e-governance

enters are already established and offering services like issue of driving license,

vehicle registration, with the introduction of computerized system of issuance of

certificates in these centres again the scope of services has been enlarged.

The three components viz. HimBhoomi, Himris and E-Praman has been

successfully implemented in all the district of the state. Under HimBhoomi

127124 nakals were issued, 64327 number of mutations attested in the field,

68473 mutations were entered 78233 mutation are pending 4820 villages for

which next jamabandi generated and 1520 villages for which Khasra Girdawari

printed. Under Himris 36494 registrations were made and under E-Praman

328796 various certificates were issued and the total revenue generated under

three components was Rs. 94,09,054.

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Impact of Revenue-Governance

The computerization of land record has brought efficiency and

transparency in land revenue Administratin besides making the revenue record

temper proof, leads to easy maintenance and fast updation. It has empowered

the land holders to get their records easily. The earlier manual system was time

consuming and having many hurles in getting the vital information for various

purposes. This has also helped in obtaining a loan from bank, serves as a proof

for getting various benefits under different government schemes, submission

during court cases and requirement for seeking compensation and crop

insurance during natural calamities.

The ICT system26 allows better management by Divisional

Commissioners, Collectors, tehsildars and lower level revenue officers in

implementing the revenue lawss and by-laws. With this various reports can be

generated easily and the data available with the revenue department can be

timely submitted to various notional and international agencies for getting various

project and schemes. ICT has also resulted in giving better services, hereby

giving a better image of the Govt. The record keeping has also been better in

comparison to the earlier manual system.

HimBhoomi-RoR (Nakal) Distribution Module

One of the main objectives of the land records computerization is to

provide the Nakal to the general public without any inconvenience. With the help

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of the software the information related to various requests are entered and

printouts of RoR are given instantaneously. The main features of this module are

27.

1) Online & offline provision of issue of Records-of-rights information.

2) Search facility to identify the owner is provided to identify the owner if

the individual does not know the ownership rights/ details.

3) Easy maintenance of cash received and nakals being issued.

4) Easy supervision by Tehsildar with the help of various reports available

in the software.

The documents for which Nakal will be available are as follows:

1. Shajra Nasb (Genealogical Tree

2. Jamabandi (Records of Rights)

3. Wazib-Ul-arj (Customary Rights)

4. Naksha Bartan (Forestry/TD Rights)

LOKVANI
Lokvani28 is a public private partnership E-governance program started

with combined efforts of District Administration and National Informatics Centre

(Technical care taker) in District Sitapur. The goal of this program is to provide

accountable and transparent governance to district Sitapur, which has 88% rural

population with 38.86% literacy rate. First physical interface to this system is 42

85
kiosk centres spread uniformly in district and continuously increasing in numbers.

License for Kiosk centre, user name and password is given to existing Cyber

cafes/ computer training institute in district by signing agreement between

Lokvani and owner of cyber café. This decision was taken to ensure the financial

viability and the long-term sustainability of the kiosks and to generate

employment for educated youth. People can access information regarding

medical facility, Land Records, Arms license application status, GPG accounts of

basic education teachers and can file complaint to District Magistrate by paying

nominal fixed charges to Kiosk or by using short message service and Integrated

Voice Response System29. DM forward these complaints to concern officer with

guideline and deadline for action should be taken. These complaints travel

through OFC in district head quarter and through mail or manually to officer

which are working in remote area. Uneducated complainant can check the

progress of work through kiosk centre. Success story of this system is not only

supported by national new paper and maganize but also by facts. More than

47,700 complaints registered in short duration of 14 months and more than 90%

complaints had been disposed successfully. Complaint pending for last 33 years

has been solved through Lokvani. In spite of 12.74% literate women, 10%

complainants are women from rural who are unable to travel District head

quarter. This system has generated awareness among uneducated rural peoples

regarding various government schemes, government prescribed forms, details of

development work in the district, lists of old age pensioners, lists of scholarship

beneficiaries, Funds allotted in various government schemes, allotment of food

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grains to Fare price shop, allotments of funds to village, free medical services

etc. Mid Day Meal, Food for Work and BPL (Below poverty line) are name of few

schemes whose monitoring is done through Lokvani.

AKSHAYA
Akshaya, an innovative project30 implemented in the State of Kerala

aimed at bridging the digital divide, addresses the issues of ICT access, basic

skill sets and availability of relevant content. Quality ICT dissemination and

service delivery facilities (Akshaya Centres’) are set up within a mazsimum of 2

kilometers for any household and networked leveraging entrepreneurship.

Though originated as an initiative to address the backwardness of Malappuram

district, Akshaya was conceived as a landmark ICT project by the Kerala State

Information Technology Mission to bring the benefits of this technology to the

entire population of the State. The moduls for this was establishment of grass

roots level ICT centres at the Panchayat/ Municpal ward level.

Today, Akshaya31 is acting as an instrument in rural empowerment and

economic development. The project is a catalyst in creating massive economic

growth and creation of direct and indirect employment in the State by focusing on

the various facts of e-learning, e-transaction, e-governance etc. thus the project

is having a long standing impact on the social, economic and political scenario of

the State. The Akshaya centres’ in the State will now sell various products of

public sector telecom major Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL). According to an

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official release, the 2,086 Akshaya centres will sell BSNL’s India Telephone

Cards, SIM cards for BSNL’s mobile service, recharge coupons, CD-ROM

directories and so on. BSNL and the Kerala Stat IT Mission recently signed a

memorandum of understanding in this regard 32.

E-Choupal

ITC’s Agri Business Division, one of India’s larges exporters of agricultural

commodities, has conceived e-Choupal33 as a more efficient supply chain aimed

at delivering value to its customers around the world on a sustainable basis. The

e-Chupal facility is aimed at providing variety of information such as weather and

soil conditions for the farming community34.

The e-Choupal model34 has been specifically designed to tackle the

challenges posed by the uique features of Indian agriculture, characterized by

fragmented farms, weak infrastructure and the involvement of numerous

intermediaries, among others.

‘e-Choupal’ also unshackles the potential of Indian farmer who has been

trapped in a vicious cycle of low risk taking ability-low investment- low

productivity – weak market orientation – low value addition – low margin- low

risk taking ability. This made him and Indian agribusiness sector globally

uncompetitive, despite rich & abundant natural resources.

Such a market-led business model can enhance the competitiveness of

Indian agriculture and trigger a virtuous cycle of higher productivity, higher

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incomes, enlarged capacity for former risk management, larger investments and

higher quality and productivity.

Further, a growth in rural incomes will also unleash the latent demand for

industrial goods so necessary for the continued growth of the Indian economy.

This will create another virtuous cycle propelling the economy into a higher

growth trajectory.

Launched in June 2000, ‘e-Choupal’, has already become the

largest initiative among all Internet based interventions in rural India. ‘e-Choupal’

services today reach out to over 4 million farmers growing a range of crops-

soyabean, coffee, wheat, rice, pluses, shrimp – in over 40,000 villages through

6500 kiosks across ten states (Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Uttarakhand,

Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Kerela and

tamil Nadu). The problems encountered while setting up and managing these ‘e-

Choupals’36 are primarily of infrastructural inadequacies, including power supply,

telecom connectivity and bandwidth, apart from the challenge of imparting skills

to the first time internet users in remote and inaccessible areas of rural India.

BHOOMI
Bhoomi (meaning land) is the project of on-line delivery and management

of land records in Karnataka 37. It provides transparency in land records

management with better citizen services and takes discretion away from civil

servants at operating levels.

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 The Revenue Department in Karnataka, with the technical assistance from

national Informatics Centre (NIC, Bangalore, has built and operationalised the

BHOOMI system throughout the state. The BHOOMI has computerized 20 million

records of land ownership of 6.7 million farmers in the state 38.

BHOOMI has reduced the discretion of public officials by introducing

provisions for recording a mutation request online. Farmers can now access the

database and are empowered to follow up. In the BHOOMI project, a printed

copy of the RTC can be obtained online by providing the name of the owner or

plot number at computerized land record kiosks in 177 taluk offices, for a fee of

Rs. 15. A second computer screen faces the clients to enable them to see the

transaction being performed. A farmer can check the status of a mutation

application on Touch Screen Kiosks. If the revenue inspector does not complete

the mutation within 45 days, a farmer can now approach a senior officer person

with their grievance. The Karnataka government’s ‘Bhoomi’ project has led to the

computerization of the centuries- old system of handwritten rural land records.

Through it, the revenue department has done away with the corruption ridden

system that involved bribing village accountants to procure land records;

records of right, tenancy and cultivation certificates (RTCs). The project is

expected to benefit seventy lakh villagers in 30,000 villages39. A farmer can walk

into the nearest taluk office and ask for a computer printout of his land record

certificate for Rs. 15. He can also check details of land records on a touch-screen

kiosk by inserting a two-rupee coin. These kiosks, installed at the taluk office, will

provide the public with a convenient interface to the land records centre 40.

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 The Centre’s proposal to replicate Karnataka’s “Bhoomi” project

throughout the country reflects well on the State Government. Bhoomi, the self-

sustaining e-governance project for the computerized delivery of rural land

records is a novel project. It is will not only transform rural life but also help

achieve the much-needed transparency in revenue administration, which is

riddled with corruption and red tape. The credit for this revolutionary step shoul

go to the Chief Minister, S.M. Krishna, who not only initiated the project but also

kept up a sustained effort to implement it speedily 41.

JUDIS

NIC has brought out The Judgment Information System (JUDIS)42,

consisting of complete text of all reported judgment of Supreme Court, High

Courts of Delhi, AP, Jammu and Kashmir, Bombay, Madras, Goa, Allahabad,

Guwahati and Tis Hazari Delhi District out. Judgments can be accessed through

part name, Advocate, Data of judgment and more importantly by free text search.

This enables the users to retrieve all relevant judgments on a particular subject.

As a result of this very useful service an ordinary litigant can find out precedents

of a case on his/her own. It saves lot of time of judges and advocates in locating

precedents as well as saves lot of space in maintenance of a law library.

RAJYA SABHA

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 The Upper House of Parliament has been actively involve in use of

Information technology to make access to Parliament related information easier.

A large number of applications have been developed and implemented, for the

use of Members Parliament Secretariat as well as for the benefit of Public at

large. The most up-to-date website of Rajya Sabha 43 is the storehouse of million

of pages of Information well classified in various heads and sub-heads. The

Rajya Sabha website give information on Proceedings of Rajya Sabha,

committees information, Business of the House, Debate held in the House,

Parliament Questions and Answers, Status of Legislation, Information relating to

various Committees of the House, Who’s Who, Address of Members, Rules of

Procedure of Rajya Sabha etc. The website in intended for governments,

legislative bodies in India and abroad, academic Institutions, Print and visual

media, the general public and Non Resident Idnians.

LOK SABHA
Lok Sabha Secretariat has set up a state of the art computer and

communication Centre in New Parliament Library Building. A dedicated Member’s

Query Booth serves MPs for all their IT needs. NIC44 has developed a number

of Computer based applications for the Lok Sabha Secretariat. The Website of

Lok Sabha has been designed and developed by NIC. The majority of application

running here are similar to the applications at the Rajya Sabha. Some important

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facilities provided include databases with information regarding question and

answers and debates.

e-POST
The internet revolution has allowed rapid exchange of communication

through email. However, the internet has not reached most of rural India and

other remote areas. To bridge this digital divide, and to bring the benefit of the

revolutionary internet technology to people living in rural areas, Department of

Posts has introduced e-post45. The e-Post was initially launched in five States

on an experimental basis. In the wake of the experience gained and the service

has been launched on national basis. This project has been implemented by NIC

on a turnkey absis. E-Post is a service under which printed or even handwritten

massages of customers are scanned and transmitted as emil. At the destination

offices, these messages are printed, enveloped and delivered through postmen

like other letters to the respective postal addresses. For this purpose, e-Post

centres46 have been set up in Post Offices covering all the districts and major

towns. These e-Post centres are equipped with internet connection, computers

and printers. However, e-Post service is not limited to the e-Post centres only. It

can be availed of from any Post Office. Inrrespective of whether a customer is in

a metropolis or in a remote village, he can send and receive e-Post messages.

The messages booked at Post Offices which are not the e-Post centres, are sent

to e-Post centres for scanning and dispatch. Similarly, messages received at e-

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Post centres for areas beyond their delivery jurisdiction are printed and sent to

concerned Post Offices for delivery in normal matter through postman. The

current developmental process was creating linkage between the traditional

postal systems with the modern techniques. Mobile phones, computers and other

modern gazettes have outplayed the conventional mode of communication.

While the use of such communication systems could not be negated for their

respective importance in everyone’s likfe, the postal system could be made

better by sing them47.

e-NAGARPALIKA
e-Nagarpalika is a comprehensive suite of software solutions for Urban

Local Bodies which aims automation of all municipal functions. E-Nagarpalika

attempts to provide improved Citizen Sercies; Accountability to Citizen;

Streamline procedures; Monitor Revenues and Services. The e-Facilities offered

cover e- Payments; e- Registrations; e- Certificates; e-Submissions; e-Status; e-

Alerts; e-Acknowledgements; e-Downloads. E- Nagarpalika derives its strength

from standardization of the basic components patient to application, strict Act

compliance, streamlining of procedures, work flow automation, hierarchy-wise

authenticity, online services, status, horizontal and vertical Integration, inter-

module interface, cutting edge technology and strict security. The web site

provides facilities for download of application forms, Information on citizen

charter, Acts and government Orders, Municipality profile, Govt. programs,

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Welfare schemes, Development works, Status on applications submitted and tax

dues, Grievance registration and status enquiry, Budget information and links to

important sites. The facility for Births and Deaths Ragistrations covers capturing

of event details; Registration of events; Issuance of Certificates; Name inclusion;

Non availability Certificates; Registers; Statistics. The Property Tax and Vacant

Land Tax options includes assessment as per Monthly Rental value and Capital

cost; revised assessment; Revision petitions and Appeal petitions; Demand

Collections; Warrants and Distraints; Write off and Temporary Remissions;

Vacancy Remission; Exemptions; Title Transfers; Special Notice/ Endorsements/

Demand Notice; Registers / Field Books/ DCB/ Defaulters / MIS Reports. Other

options include Trade Licences; water Tax and Water Tap Connections;

Advertisement Tax; Building Permissions; Projects and Works Management;

Grievance Redressal; Assets Inventory; Court Cases and Financial Accounting.

e-ASHA
NIC UP State Unit, Lucknow has evolved an integrated I.T. solution e-

ASHA (Automated Service & Help for All) as a G2G and G2C application48.

Using the services through e-ASHA, a citizen can get not only specific

information of public utility from the Government departments, but can also pay

different types of bills through eASHA kiosks/couters across the city. E-ASHA

provides copy of Record of Right (Khatauni) at the counter, and offers enquiries

related to tax details, property valuation, vehicles registration, pension, public

95
grievances, to being with. It also offers collection of payments against bills

related to Trade Tax, House Tax, Water Tax, Road Tax etc. – all at a single

counter. Common user interface screens for each service displaying, or requiring

inputs for department specific data during a transaction. Client/ server web-based

interface for each service reaching out over the Internet to the comforts of

citizens’ home /office Client/ Server web-based implementation requires provision

of just a web-browser at the front-end a web/ data server at the back-end, with a

dialup/ ISDN connectivity Uniform and minimal front end screens 49 requiring

little operator training.

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 CHAPER-3
E-GOVERNANCE IN PUNJAB &

CHANDIGARH: INITIATIVES AND ITS

IMPLEMENTATION

97
 E- governance initiative in Punjab and Chandigarh

E-governance in Punjab

IT is a significant facilitator of successful governance, and can to a long

way in touching the lives of the common man. In this chapter we analyze the

technology and strategies behind e-governance initiatives that are benefiting the

masses of Punjab. The value of IT is not truly realized unless it touches everyday

lives. In an enterprise environment, IT should be able to percolate all the way

from the senior executives to the bottom, and make the job easier even for a

fourth class worker. Similarly, in a governance projects, IT should advance the

lives of the masses.

Introduction of E-Governance is the key to making information technology

(IT) relevant to ordinary citizens. E-governance is a culture, which changes how

citizens relate to governments as much as it changes how citizens relate to each

other. It brings into view re-definition of needs and responsibilities.

According to Dataquest – IDC e-governance Satisfaction Study, the state of

Punjab is ranked at 16 th for citizen satisfaction, whereas it has 5 th rank in e-

readiness. It clearly shows that though the state has started leveraging ICT

extensively to boost its social / educational infrastructure, but the actual benefits

have either not seeped into or are yet to impact common citizens. One the other

side, overall business satisfaction ranks very closely to overall e-readiness at 6 th

rank. While the total number of active e-governance projects has increased there

98
is still lot of room to ensure that the benefits reach the intended users in the

quickest possible way.

The three pillars of success of e-governance are:

 State Wide Area Network

 State Data Centers

 And Citizen Service Centers

Government of Punjab is progressively implementing its e-governance

projects by swiftly undertake development of state wide area network, state dta

centers and citizen service centers. The Punjab State wide area network is

PAWAN which according to Narinderjeet Singh1 ,Secretary Information

Technology” 193 (out of 196) Point of Presence (PoPs) in the state, including one

at the state level, 20 at district level and 172 at Sub-division/ level” have already

been implemented. “Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is providing 2 Mbps

bandwidth for this project throughout the network. Apart from this, 21 Video

Conferencing Centres have also been setup under the project”.

State Wide Area Network

A typical2 government department having an e-governance application

requires the following:

 A delivery platform for e-Governance applications.

 A mechanism for fast internal communication.

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  Increasd accessibility to services for the citizens and multiply usage.

 Carry progressively increasing data and applications.

 Speed up the transfer of information between employees in different

locations and to allow them to share common files. Carriage of voice and

data in an integrated manner rather than having separate networks for

voice and data.

 Have a secure and reliable channel to transfer data across locations.

 To fulfill these requirements, implementation of a State Wide Area Network

is required.

State Wide Area Network (SWAN) has been acknowledge as an element

of the core infrastructure for supporting e-governance initiatives. Government of

Punjab is in process of establishing the Punjab State Wide Area Network

(PSWAN). The Punjab government signed an agreement with HCL Info systems

to establish Punjab State wide Area Network (PAWAN). The Punjab State Wide

Area Network (PAWAN) will serve as the backbone network for data, voice and

video communications throughout the State.3 The Project PAWAN to be

implemented at a total cost of Rs. 41.45 crores will connect 200 sites i.e., 20

districts, 179 Sub-Divisions & Blocks across in Punjab putting the state on the

fast trac towards IT proficiency and would be implemented in 26 weeks time. The

Network for Punjab Government will be an Integrated, fully manageable network

enabling Citizen Services and effective e-governance that is key for any State’s

development. Departments of Treasury & Accounts, Excise and Taxation, Land

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Records, Transport, Police, Municipal Corporations and DC Offices shall use this

network immediately. This network shall provide seamless end-to-end

connectivity for all Governmetn offices across the state.

On the occasion of signing an agreement with HCL Infosystems to

establish Punjab State Wide Area Network (PAWAN),4 Adesh Partap Singh

Kairon, Minister for Information Technology said, “The Punjab State Wide Area

Network shall act as an information super highway it will be set up on build, own,

operate and transfer basis for give years. PAWAN will follow a 3-tier structure

through point of presence across various levels.” PAWAN is envisaged as the

vehicle for effective implementation of Electronic Governance.

As per the Punjab state government policy PAWAN is expected to cater to

the information and communication requirements of the entire state government

and its departments. The implementation of PAWAN will provide reliable, vertical

and horizontal connectivity within the state administration to make the

Government more productive by reducing communication cost and also a secure

backbone for electronic transactions.

PAWAN will endow efficient service management with a complete range of

Government services and information. To facilitates citizens of government

services it will take full advantage of convergence of communication technology.

PAWAN will ensure that every citizen in the state has access to Government

services and information whenever and wherever they need it in a cost –efficient

manner irrespective of the loction in the stat of Punjab.

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 The Project PAWAN to be implemented will connect 2002 sites i.e., 20

districts, 179 Sub-Divisions & Blocks across in Punjab. PAWAN would follow a 3

Tier structure through Point of Presence (POP) across the various levels.

 3-Tier structure of PAWAN through Point of Presence (PoP)

across the various Levels are:

State Head Quarter (or State Network Centre (SNC) constitutes Tier I.

 District Head Quarter (or District Network Centre (DNC) constitutes Tier II.

 Sub Divisional Head Quarter (or Sub Division Network Centre (SDNC) and

the Block Head Quarters (or Block Network Centres (BNC) constitutes Tier

III.

The minimum bandwidth for PAWAN at each tier shall be of 2Mbps.

Departmental offices of Government of Punjab shall now be connected to these

Points of Presence (PoP) of PAWAN as Horizontal Office. 50 horizontal offices

shall be connected to State Head Quarter (Tier I), 20 Horizontal offices shall be

connected to District Head Quarter (Tier II) and 10 Horizontal offices shall be

connected to Sub Divisional Head Quarters and block Head Quarters (Tier III)

Network Operating enter (NOC) of PAWAN will be connected to the State

Data Centre (SDC) to provide dedicated access to applications hosted at State

and Central Department. Internet access will also be provided to PAWAN users

through Internet Gateway at State Network Center. Point to Point and point to

multipoint video conferencing through High Quality video equipments &

Multimedia PC is also provisioned in the network. The SWAN shall be connected

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to the Common Service Centers (CSCs) for providing access to major e-

governance services/ applications at the village level.5

Present Status6

One State Network Center is operational with 20 districts connected to it.

Further 174 SDNC/BNC are connected to respective districts.

The services at present being served from SNC are:

1. Video Conferencing is available at all districts and also available

in special Horizontal offices.

2. IP Telephony is available at all PoP’s.

3. Internet is available at PoP’ and Computer Systems connected

to it.

4. Messaging Solution is available at all the PoP’s.

State Data Center (SDC)

State Data Centre Scheme for establishing Data Centers across 35

States/ UTs across the country was approved by the Government on 24 th January

2008 with a total expense of Rs 1623.2 crores. It includes the Capital and

Operational expenses over a period of five years. The States/ Uts have been

categorized in three categories namely Large, Medium and Small. Through the

State Data Centers, the Government wishes to create a common and secure IT

infrastructure to host state level e-governance applications or data to enable

seamless delivery of Government to Government (G2G) , Government to Citizen

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(G2C) and Government to Business (G2B) services. State Data Centre acts as a

mediator & convergence point between open unsecured public domain and

sensitive government environment.

State Data Centre: Objectives7

 Create state-of art Data Centre infrastructure coupled with communication

and other infrastructure.

 To provide shared, secure and managed infrastructure for consolidating

and hosting State level applications with the view to provide G2G, G2C,

G2B services.

 To provide fast, efficient and secure online services to the citizens.

 To provide trustworthy and managed environment, where citizents can

conduct secure transactions.

The state data centre will serve as central repository of the databases for

the State with secure data storage thus providing integrated and reliable 24 * 7

online delivery of services. Some of the key deparmtnetts/ projects, for which

SDC infrastructure and services is an immediate requirement are Excise &

Taxation, Land Records, Food and Civil supplies, Local Government, SUWIDHA,

MMP’s and many other departments.

8The Department of Information Technology (DIT) has approved the

Establishment of State Data Centers (SDC) in 27 States/ UTs for a total outlay of

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Rs 1,237 Crores. The State whose proposals have been approved by DIT are:

Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal

Pradesh, Jharkhand, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur,

Meghalaya, Nagaland, Orissa, Puducherry, Punjab, Rajashthan, Sikkim, Tamil

Nadu, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Uttarkhand, Arunachal

Pradesh & Mizoram.

State Data Center (SDC) will facilitate various State departments to host

their Services/ applications on a common infrastructure this has lead the ease of

Integration and efficient management, ensuring that computing resources and

the support connectivity infrastructure (SWAN) is adequately and optimally used.

These services would be extended to Government agencies, Citizens and

Businesses through the connectivity Infrastructure being rolled out such as State

Wide Area network (SWAN) and Common Service Centers (CSC) M/s Wipro

Limited is the Project consultant for the implementation of this project.

In accordance with national e-governance plan the Punjab government

has decided to set a state data centre at Chandigarh and district data centres at

each district to cater the information needs at various levels. The Punjab

government distict data centres will be established in district administrative

complex. The servers will be procured by individual departments and the

department of information technology will invest on the data centre hardware as

per the Request for Proposal.

Present status

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 The RFPs which were under preparation of 16 States are Andhra

Pradesh, Pujab, Manipur, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya

Pradesh, Goa, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Karnataka,

Andaman & Nicobar, Jammu & Kashmir and Lakhshadweep.9

Source: Round Table Conference, 2009 Common Services Centers (CSCs)

The CSC is a strategic cornerstone of the National e-Governance Plan

(NeGP), approved by the Government in May 2006, as part of its commitment in

the National Common Minimum Programme to introduce e-governance on a

massive scale. The PPP model of the CSC scheme envisages a 3-tier structure

consisting of the CSC operator (called village Level Entrepreneur or VLE); the

Service Centre Agency (SCA), that will be responsible for a division of 500-1000

CSCs; and a State Designated Agency (SDA) identified by the State

Government responsible for managing the implementation over the entire

State.10

The State Government is determined to merge its e-Government

accomplishments with the overall framework of the Central government’s

proposed CSC Scheme to reach out to the citizens staying in rural Punjab. Under

this programme, Punjab plans to set up 2,500 common services centres that

would provide high quality and cost-effective video, voice and data content in the

areas of e-governance, education, health, entertainment and other government

and private services. The Punjab State Government has appointed Punjab State

e-Governance Society (SSEGS) as the State Nodal Agency (SLA) to coordinate

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the implementation of the CSC Schme. For effective implementation of the

scheme identification of e-Government Services to be delivered, factors involved

in establishment of CSCs, assessment of Network/ Technology architecture, and

present status of PAWAN and procurement of SCAs through study of these was

conducted.

Punjab government is planning to implement 2,112 Common Service

Centres (CSCs) in rural areas across the state. These service centres will act as

service deliver points for government and business services to the citizens at the

village leve.

The CSCs would offer Punjab citizens a large number of services in the

areas of e-Governance, education, health, agriculture, commercial and retail.

Delivering government services by these CSCs will be mandatory. The CSCs will

be located across 10 zones and all installation and commissioning would be

completed in a year’s time. 11

Common Service Centers

CSCs will help bridge the technological divide between the urban and rural

masses. With a view to offer an integrated set of services to the citizens, the

Sukhmani Society for Citizen Services was created. Sukhmani Service centres

would offer citizen services pertaining to all departments under one-roof.

Sukhmani Society is a district level body that would work under the overall

umbrella framework of Punjab State E-Governance Society (PSEGS). Punjab

State E-Governance Society (PSEGS) has been identified as State Designated

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Agency (SDA) for facilitating implementation of CSCs scheme in Punjab 12. All

the service centers in the district would be established, managed and run by the

Sukhmani Society of that district on a self sustaining revenue model. Policies of

the government with regards to Sukhmani can be deployed from a single point

across the entire state consequently immensely improving the manageability,

integrity and reliability of the system. Sukhmani is more than a mere technology

integration project. It would serve as a mix of offline and online means to deliver

the citizen services. Sukhmani is a distributed application with one of the aims to

establish a very high degree of availability of the application. SUKHMANI stands

for Smart, Unified, Knowledgeable, Humble/ Honest, Moral, Accountable, Novel

Initiative.

Present Status

The RFP for selection of Service Centre Agencies is under approval of

Government of Idnia.

Sukhmani14, the government of Punjab project helps in government

functions such as information dissemination, approvals, transactions, and

grievance redressal. Sukhmani is the citizen geteway for over 120 services

provided by the government. The solution has three main components.

1. A WAN

2. IT infrastructure for service centres

3. Applications to automate various services which can communicate

asynchronously to a transaction geteway.

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The first component includes creating a WAN to connect the planned 120 plus

services centres to a central data centre. The second element is to create a cost-

effective, scalable IT infrastructure. The third is to create effective shrink wrapped

applications that can be quaickly rolled out across the service centres. Microsoft

is the solutions partner for the Project.

It is not just a technology project but one that encompasses reengineering

of business processes to create innovative solutions that offer integrated citizen

services under one roof.15

SUWIDHA
SUWIDHA has been conceived to facilitate the citizen by capturing the

input at a single point, defining a specified delivery date depending upon the type

of service and accepting cash at the counter itself. SUWIDHA was launched

Fatehgarh Sahib in Punjab in October 2002 and rolled out to all districts of

Punjab by January 2004 on the basis of a self sustaining revenue model. The

operational cost of running the centers is recover from citizens in the form of

facilitation charges. Single User- friendly window Disposal Help- line for

Applicants (SUWIDHA), the one –stop shop for devlivery of more than 150 citizen

services offered by the central , state and local governments was ranked

Topmost among all the e-governance projects in the country by Skoch in 2005-

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06. also SUWIDHA received Excellence award from Microsoft in September

2006.

SUWIDHA 16 is built to provide the convenience to the citizen by capturing

the input at a single point, defining a specified delivery data depending upon the

type of service, accepting cash at the counter itself and delivering district

administration services to the citizens from the same counters. It ensures timely

delivery without any need to interact with the concerned branch, SUWIDHA has

been implemented in all the districts of Punjab. Online status of the applications

submitted on SUWIDHA Counters in the districts is available on SUWIDHA

website (http://suwidha.nic.in). After the successful pilot launch of SUWIDHA-

SDM at SDM Mohali, SUWIDHA Project has been replicated at 56 SDM offices of

Punajb and is being expanded to all SDM offices.

Earlier the services provided by manual system now provided by e-

SUWIDHA were expensive and time consuming; middleman harassed common

people and tried to shell money. Moreover no fixed time frame for the services

was there.

The objective of SUWIDHA about taking IT to rural areas is to facilitate

citizens by capturing inputs at a single point, defining a specified delivery data

depending upon the type of service, accepting cash at the counter itself and

delivery of final document. This project has been able to give fast, convenient

and corruption-free delivery of services to citizens. It has been implemented

successfully in all the districts and most of the Sub-Divisional offices of Punjab.

SUWIDHA provides more than 33 services to citizens which includes services

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such as registration of marriages, arms license, ration card, issuance of passport,

driving license, registration of vehicle, collection of application for old age

pension, SC/BC/OBC certificates and birth & death Certificate.17 The objectives

of SUWIDA is to provide responsive and transparent services to the citizens of

the state by means of friendly and affordable interface between the government

and public the objective is to offer citizens cost effective service at the same time

improving the quality of service. On the technology side implementing technology

in such a way to promote transparency, efficiency, objectivity, accountability and

speed in government processes.

 Main Features18:

 All submissions of applications/requests for service(s) on a single counter.

 Linkage with backend applications. The citizen is not required to visit the

branch as the status can also be made available either through WebCITI

(Web-based Citizen IT Interface) or DialITI (Dialup-based Citizen IT

Interface).

 Committed date for the delivery of service. Automatic stamping of the

delivery data on computer- generated receipt, based on the type of service

requested.

 Monitoring by SDM for delays beyond the specified dates

 Delivery of the services from the same counter. No need to visit the

branch.

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  On the spot capturing of photo whenever required; saves time and cost to

the citizen.

 Acceptance of petty cash. Now citizen will not be required to visit the bank

and the Treasury for paying service charges.

 Information on schemes and procedures.

 Application forms.

 Provision for on the spot delivery of services where the verification can be

ensured based on the data available in district databases.

Benefits of SUSIDHA to citizens

All the applications pertaining to different jobs of DC office are accepted at

Single Window, Delivery time for each and every job is pre-defined, Delivery is

made through SUWIDHA counter, and a Citizen can check the status of

application through web site http://suwidha.nic.in

e-Suwidha brings in a number of benefits, such as:

 Hassle-free process for the applicant –the applicant goes to the nearest

CIC to submit his or her application and can check the status of the

application on the web. The applicant need not visit the actual office to

submit his or her application or to know the status.

 Transparency in dealing- the applicant goes to the acceptance centre and

does not have to deal with the officals who actually process it.

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  Greater monitoring and control over the office performance of staff- details

of tendency at each state is maintained and is available online for

monitoring by the head of office.

HCLI was awarded the contract to establish the Punjab State Wide Area

Network (PAWAN). Horizontal connectivity has been established across all

districts and state head offices. The project has enabled the state to connect

government bodies in 179 blocks across twenty districts. Most of the applications

running on PAWAN have been developed. One center has been set up to handle

pilot project. Twenty CSC scalled Suwidha Centers in Punjab have come up in

the district level across the state while seventy more have come up at the sub-

district level. Twenty-four services are being offered from the Suwidha Centers at

the district level, while twelve services are offered from the sub-district Suwidha

Centers. The numbers of services as well as centers are likely to be increased

soon under the PPP model, which is being rolled out now. There are plans to roll

out CSCs in urban areas too. E-KiosKs a touch screen based system, the

software of E-Kiosk has been developed to provide the status of SUWIDHA

applications, Voter list, information about various schemes, Bus/ Rail Time table

etc.

The project is maintained by team of operators and supervisor employed

by District Administration for Suwidha Project. The Suwidha Centre is completely

owned by the respective District Administrations. The project provides various

services like: Issuance/ renewal of bus passes, issuance of id cards, issuance of

various certificates, driving licenses, arms licenses and other, NOC for various

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services, etc. Suwidha Project will be integrated with CSC scheme of

Government of India.

Application processing in government is mainly paper based and not very

citizen friendly. Generally, in the existing administrative setup, when an applicant

submits his or her application along with supporting documents, the application

goes through a number of steps of verification and validation. The citizen has to

visit various desks several times bedore the document is finally available to him

or her.

With the implementation of SUWIDHA, citizens can submit their request

for services at a single location and monitor their status. The administrators can

monitor the efficiency of his or her subordinates in delivering these services; and

consequently will be in a position to initiate correcting steps in improving the

efficiency. This brings in transparency to the process of providing services at the

local level and reduces harassment of the citizens. In a nutshell, SUWIDHA uses

information technology to simplify the processes of government functioning to

bring efficiency and transparency in governance.

e-District
With the consolidation of state data base at SDC, successful

implementation of PAWAN, and CSC, e-District project is also turning into reality.

Integrated and seamless delivery of citizen services through Common Service

Centres in a systematic way by district administration with the automation of

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workflow, backend computerization, data digitization across participating

departments is the ultimate aim of the e-district project.

The Governemnt has initiated the required steps to implement e-District

project under National e-governance Plan (NeGP), which would pave the way for

integration of all the services of different departments at district level and

complete workflow based backend digitization. Pilot District are Nawanshahr19

and Kapurthala20.

According to the e-District guidelines, the implementation of e-District

project (Phase-I) is planned over a period of eighteen months for study,

development, testing and roll-out in the two pilot districts. Thereafter Request for

Proposal (RFP) would be prepared for state wide roll out for the rest of the

districts in the stat ein the next six montsh21.

Major IT application of Punjab is through following projects:

Web-based counseling for PSBTE (Punjab State Technical

Education Board)

Web-based Counseling for PSBTE (Punjab State Technical Education

Board ) First of its kind in the state of Punjab, We based off Campus Counseling

for PSBTE has been implemented for the admissions in all the Diploma courses

in Engineering, Lateral Entry (LEET) to Engineering and Pharamacy streams in

70 institutes across the state, a most transparent system of admitting students to

various academic steams. Three rounds of counseling were held for 16,638

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seats available in polytechnic colleges in the state of Punjab spanning over one

month. In total, 21000 studetns registered themselves for taking admissions in all

the three streams. The Punjab State Board of Technical Education22 (PSBTE) is

an autonomous statutory authority crated under the Punjab State Board of

Technical Education & Industrial Trainign act 1992, for regulating and controlling

academic standards in Institutes of Technical Education and for making

admission & conducting examinations in Polytechnics and Industrial Training

Institutes. The board conducts Joint Entrance Test (JET) for admission to various

engineering diploma courses being run in the Government, Govt. Aided/ Self-

financing Institutions affiliated to the board. For other course such as Pharmacy

and Lateral entry to diploma courses, the marks based merit list is considered.23

Objectives

Web based counseling for admission to all courses, is being conducted

with main objectives to bring in 100% transparency in seats allotment and

admission. Government of Punjab initiative to build a public interface to minimize

travel burdens on candidates and their parents for counseling. Entralized

database and centralized monitoring provides ample time to counselees for

submission, change, delete, re-ordering of multiple choices from anywhere any

time with paperless counseling. The advantage of on-line off campus counseling

is that the seat vacated by earlier candidate will be right away allotted to the next

candidate in the merit, who has opted of it. In physical counseling it is allotted in

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the subsequent allotments, the merit candidate will be denied of his choice and

the seat will be allotted to a candidate, who is lower in themerit.

Web-based online off-Campus Counseling for Punjab State Technical

Education Board (PSBTE) has been successfully conducted this year for the

admissions in all the Diploma courses in Engineering, Lateral Entry to

Engineering and Pharmacy steams in all the 70 institutes across the state.

Previously, all the students were required to come to PSBTE Chandiarh for the

counseling spread over many days, which was a hectic exercise for both

candidates as well as authorites. But web based counseling allowing the

candidates from anywhere to enter unlimited choices was a pleasant experiences

in the Chandigarh (UT) as well as ccentral institutes at Ludhiana and Jalandhar

which are governed under reservation policies of UT administration and central

government respectively. In order to provide ample opportunity to the deserving

candidates of different stratum, three rounds of counseling spanning around one

month in July-August, were conducted.24

PRISM (Property Registration Information System Module)

PRISM is ISO certified product which automates all major activates of

Sub-Registrar office and over deeds of Sale, Mortgage, Will, Adoption, SPA,

GPA, Exchange, Pattanama/ Lease, Tatima, Cancellation of SPA/GPA/Will etc.

Skoch ranked PRISM ninth among all the e-governance projects in the country in

2005-06.

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 PRISM means complete land registration including valuation of property

based on market value, capturing photographs of sellers, buyers and witness.

Scanning of deed document, printing of endorsement based on their deeds with

captured photographs, Entry module for property attribute such as Khewat,

Khasra and Khatoni with increased security feature have been introduced. Major

features include token issuance, online capturing, storage, printing of

photographs on stamp paper, valuation of property, scanning of deed documents

online/offline, on the spot registration, issuance of mutation notice as

Parchayadast, finalization & pendency check of deeds by SRO, single window

service etc. It has been implemented in all 153 SRO offices in Punjab.

i-TISP (Integrated Tresuries Information System of Punjab)

i-TISP is an online system developed by National Informatics Center for

automation of district treasuries in Punjab. Directorate of Treasuries and

Accounts, is the mechanism through which effective financial control is exercise

over public spending by Government. Salient features of TISP are verification of

messenger and DDO by photograph and signature, online system, computerized

cheque printing, linkage with budget, AG account & bank, tight security, Web

enabled etc. Payments, receipts pension, LOC stamp etc are included. It has

been implemented at all the District Treasuries and all Sub-Treasuries of the

state. All sub-treasuries and treasuries have been linked to the state HQ.25

Source: Department of IT, GoP

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 The above figure explains the overall architecture of Integrated Treasuries

Information system of Punjab (i-TISP). I-TISP uses Microsoft platform and

technology and is a client/ server architecture. The home page for i-TISP is

http://www.khazana.nic.in

The computer greatly reduce the time used in calculation and enhance the

accuracy and reliability of financial reports. Due to chronic delays in compiling the

accounts at the District Treasuries, the final details of Accounts are difficult to

generate, which will also be possible to be generated with speed and accuracy.

In turn it will aid the Government in analyzing the fiscal transactions minutely.

After computerization generation generation of day-to-day reports on receipts

and payments are possible. Reports are generated indicating variations of actual

and budgeted receipts and payments. The monthly Major Head wise and

Department wise reports shall be gernated through the application software,

which shall be used by Finance Department.26

All the 21 District Treasuries including Punjab Treasury Chandgigarh and

68 sub Treasuries have been computerized with following modules payment

Module, Receipt Module , Pension Module, LOC Module, Stamps Module, Data

Creation & Transmission Module.

VAHAN (Vehicle Registration System) and SARATHI (Driving

License Issuance System for Transport Department)

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 Computerization of Regional Transport offices (RTO) and district Transport

offices (DTO) had been initiated by a number of State Governments like Delhi,

Maharashtra, Bihar, Goa, West Bengal and others. Department of Transport,

Government of Punjab is one of tehm. It has modules for Registration of

Commercial and Private Vehicle, Fee & Fine Collection, Fitness Validity and tax.

Replication in the districts is under process. SARTHI (Driving License Issuance

System for Transport department ) includes various transactions like Learners’

License, Permanent License, Conductors’ License and Driving School License.

Manual system reported suffered form duplication of effort, wastage of

time and could not produce list of defaulters efficiently. VAHAN will provide

connectivity with transport offices not only across state but across the nation.

Such connectivity will prove its worth in tacking vehicles involved in illegal

activities. Stolen vehicles can be traced and duplicate registration will not be

possible of the same vehicle. It providesuseful data for better monitoring of the

itner-state and National Permits, avoiding issuance of driving license to

unauthorized persons and monitoring the inter-state issues in a better way. The

benefit of implementation of this project is to be able to deliver driving licenses

and vehicle registration certificates in 45 minutes which earlier use to take 10-15

days.

In the state of Punjab this project has already made its mark with

successful implementation in the districts of Roopnagar and Mohali. Project

VAHAN and SARATHI will be rolled out across the state on the BOOT basis.

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MESS (Monitoring of Elections Systems through SMSs)

MESS27 is Web based application software for Department of Electios,

Punjab. The application is aimed at capturing a set of fixed events for all the

Polling Stations of an Assembly Constituencies through SMS by the authorized

mobile numbers from respective Polling stations (in this case PROs) in a

prescribed format and to update the database for onoine monitoring reports on

CEO’s website. The software has the provision for entering data through web-

entry also 28 which is allowed to authorize users like ROs/AROs of the assembly

segments only.

AIS (Affidavit Issuance System) AIS29 provides easy access to the

administration for attestation of affidavit of any kind by paying nominal fees. The

photograph of the deponent is captured in person on the sport along with

purpose of affidavit and other relevant details. Welcomed and accepted by the

citizens, media and administrators, AIS has been replicated at more than 50

Tehsils in addition to all the 20 districts with service over multiple counters.

CIPA30, one of the mission mode projects under National e-Governance

Plan, is an attempt to build infrastructure and a mechanism to provide the basis

for evolution of a nationwide crime and criminals information system from the

police station level based on the Criminal Procedure code (CrPC). Common

Integrated Police Application (CIPA) Project is a Mission Mode Project (MMP)

under e-Governance of Government of Idnia. Common Integrated Police

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Application (CIPA) aims at automation of all functions carried out at the police

stations. Initially only Crime Module has been taken up. CIPA software has been

designed and developed by NIC in English language with multilingual interface

developed for Indian languages 31.

The task of monitoring the implementation of CIPA project has been

entrusted to NCRB and State Implementation Branch is monitoring the progress

of CIPA implementation. 32

A project of Ministry of Home Affairs to computerize and networking of all

the police station, it aims at reduction of manual records, elimination of duplicate

and inconsistent record keeping, maintenance of details of criminals, introducing

transparency in the working of police facilitating supervision by the senior officer

and faster response to the public. It records the events of development made by

the investigating officers in the case during investigation and facilitates entering

the contents in the case diary. It records all development s in the case right up to

the prosecution stage, like hearing of the case, and summons/ warrants issued

by the court. The implementation in Punjab has been initiated.

DSS (Depot Sahayak System )

The first Computerized Depot of Pepsu Road Transport corporation

(PRTC) was established at Patiala in Punjab33. The software for the Depot,

named as Depot Sahayak System has been developed by NIC Punjab. At

present the software supports commercial activites of the deport like generation

of waybills, ticket stock, different rotations, advance booking waybills, duty

roaster etc. it also helps the corporation in generating the various reports on

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Route Receipt, Mileage of Buses, total cash collection, passenger taxes for

Punjab and other states, over time calculation for crew etc. System designed for

Pepsu Roadways ransport Corporation (PRTC) 34, DSS covers operations like

Generation of Waybills, Closing of Waybills, Ticket Stock Arriaval and Issuance,

Ticket Box management, Generation of Advance booking Waybills Closing of

Advance Booking Waybills, Tax Calculations and Overtime Calculations etc.

AGMARKNET (Agriculture Produce Marketing Information

Network)

Whether it is domestic or overseas trade, the agricultural produce sector

has been most important component of State economy. A marketing system

backed by strong, adequate infrastructure is the core of agricultural marketing.

An efficient agricultural marketing is essential for the development of the

agricultural sector. AGMRKNET35 is a central sector scheme that was launched

by the Department of Agriculture and Cooperation in March 2000. The scheme

aims at progressively linking important agricultural produce markets spread all

over Idnia and the State Agriculture Marketing Boards/ Directorates and the DMI

for effective exchange of market information. The market information network,

AGMARKNET (agmarknet.ni.in), is being implemented jointly by DMI and NIC,

using NICNET facilities available throughout the country. AGMARKNET facilitates

market fees collection, database of dealers, Issuance of Licenses for dealers etc.

Weekly prices and arrivals trends are also being disseminated using the portal.

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Monthly prices and arrivals bulletins are being generated using the national

database. The state Agricultural Marketing Board/Departments/Markets are

collecting the desired market information and passing them to the authorites and

Head office of DMI for forward dissemination. Directorate of Marketing and

Inspection (DMI) has association with the State Agricultural Marketing Boards

and Directorates for Agricultural marketing Development in the country.

The Objectives36 of AGMARKNET is to establish a nation wide

information network for rapid collection and dissemination of market information

for its proficient utilization. Computerization of data on market fee, arket charges,

total arrivals, arrivals by agencies, prices, storage, dispatches with destination,

mode of transportation, costs, sold and unsold stocks, sources of supply with

destination, method of sale, payment, weighting, grading facilities, quantities,

graded, market personnel, market functionaries, market finance, development

programmes, infrastructure facilities, constitution/ composition of Market

committee, income and expenditure and other activites of the APMCs

(Agricultural Produce Market Committee), State Marketing Boards and

Directorates etc. will ensure flow of regular and reliable data to producers,

traders and consumers to derive maximum benefit of their sales and purchases.

AGMARKNET has increased the efficiency in marketing by effecting

improvement in the existing market information system. It has reached to the

unreached (farmers) thus providing them timely and reliable information for

decision making and reaping the future benefits.

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 For easy interface with farmers and other beneficiaries a portal for

AGMARKENT (http://agmarknet.ni.in) has been developed to serve as a single

window for accessing websites of various organizations concerned with

agricultural marketing. AGMARKNET has led to a nation-wide information

network for speedy collection and diffusion of marked information,

computerization of market related information such as market fees, market

charges, etc., ensuring regularity and reliability of data and increasing the

efficiency in agricultural markets.

Social Security Information System SSIS37 enables to maintain

and monitor the data base of pension beneficiaries under different social security

schemes disbursed through DDSSOs of Department of Social Security and

Women & Child Development. After successful implementation of pilot basis at

district Fatehgarh Sahib replication is being taken up in other districts.

DACNET (Department of Agriculture and Cooperation Network)

DACNET38 follow a very transparent approach in providing a

comprehensive resource of agriculture related information through a website

open to all. Its objective is to computerize all fields and Directorate Offices

covered under Agriculture and Cooperation. For analysis and reporting of

pesticides in RPTL office, a work flow application named SARS “Sample Analysis

and Reporting System” has been developed for Regional Pesticide Testing Lab,

Chandigarh. It aims at integrating Government functions (G2G), integrating agri-

business partners (B2B), connecting farmers (C2C) and empowering employees

(A2E). This peoject also covers operations like development of Portal for

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Directorate RPTL, implementation of generic application and provides support in

computerization of the Directorate like dialup networking etc. all the data from the

field is updated on its website (http://dacnet.nic.in) on weekly basis. The impact

of the project has been so that the Customer Satisfaction Index is a soaring high

of 91.5%.39

DCIS (District Courts Information System)

Envisaging the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), government of

Punjab aims to transform the live of citizen in the long run and bring about

changes to existing government organizations, by making government-centric

services available easily to citizens. One such step by the government of Punjab

is the introduction of the e-Judiciary system by setting up e-Courts 40 in the

state. As part of the Mission Mode Project (MMP) under the NeGP, an attempt

has been made to computerize the judicial processes. According to the plan, ICT

tools will be implemented in all the courts across the state. The stakeholders in

the e-Courts comprise of the citizens, lawmakers, judges, police officials, etc.

Objective

The main objective of this project is to help the judicial administration of

the courts in streamling their day-to-day operations. Also to help in reducing the

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cases those are pending. The focus is to fundamentally offer transparency of

information to the litigants and regular access to legal judicial databases to the

judges.

As per NeGP e-courts mission mode project aims ICT enablement of the

lower courts across the country.

Local Area Network has been established in Patiala District Court on pilog

basis. Replication in other 16 Districts Courts has been planned. The project,

which will finally be implemented in all district of Punjab, is being funded by the

Punjab and Haryana High Court. The software for these e-courts is being

developed by the National Informatics Centre. The e-courts one functional would

also help litigants know the latest status of their cases.

CONFONET (Consumer Forums Network) is an initiative of centre

government to computerize and connect the state consumer disputes redressed

commissions and District consumer forums to form a network.

OAS (Office Automation Suite)

OAS comprises of four generic and customizable modules to automate the

internal processes of any government office. DDMS (Dairy and Dispatch

Monitoring System) is developed to manage and monitor the receipt and

dispatch of mail and its movement. CCMS (Court Cases Monitoring System) is

designed to facilitate departments in maintaining and monitoring court cases

pending in different courts CoIS (Courts Information System) is generic

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customizable solution to manage administration of the court related activities of

the officers holding the courts. Specially customized version for Labour court

Patiala has been under implementation to be replicated among all the labour

courts. MMS (Meeting Monitoring system) provides single point solution for

organizing various meetings in the department by assisting in generation of

agenda of agenda itmes, Memos for the meetings, recording of minutes, action

status, etc.

PAPMIS (Punjab Agricultural Produce Management Information System)

Computerization41 of market Committees, DMO and Mandi Board Head

Office, It covers all the operation of market committees like registration of

dealers, calculation of Market Fee, Recording of daily arrival, monitoring of sale &

purchase etc. this software helps the market committee to transmit the data to

AGMARKNET portal. Up to data information of MCs is also being transmitted to

DMO and Mandi Board Head Office with the help of this software.

BPIS (Bus Passes Issuance System) is developed to facilitate the

issuance of Bus Passes to the eligible applicants. Implemented at Patiala district,

BPIS will be taken up in all the districts.

Immigration Check post Computerization has been implemented at

Amritsar check post.

VC (Video conferencing) has been established in the 17 District and

Punjab Civil Secretariat and being used by various departments of Punjab

Government.

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 DISE (District Information System for Election) DISE is randomization

software for Election Department which handles the functionalities like formation

of polling parties for Lok Sabha/ Assembly Elections in a random way, etc. as per

Election Commission of India (ECI) guidelines.

DISDIS (District Sangat Darshan Information System) –A computerized

system to automate and monitor the process of grievances monitoring with host

of features. DISDIS (District Sangat Darshan Information System) has been

implemented in all the districts 42.

DSMS (District Scheme Monitoring System) to evaluate the progress of large

number of development work/scheme on monthly basis for the better monitoring

by the distict authorities, DSMS has been developed. It has the provision for

storage of photographs of every stage of a work and the all relevant data. After

successful implementation on pilot basis at Fatehgarh Sahib District, DSMS is

being replicated in other districts.

NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005)

A special compaign has been launched in Punjab for successful

implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and

to make the implementing agencies more accountable by monitoring of work

allocation and funds under NREGA. Rural development and panchyats minister

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Ranjit Singh Brahmpura said 5.24 lakh job cards have already been issued to the

families in rural areas under NREGA in the state. The Central government had

made a provisional allotment of Rs 172 crore to Punjab for the current financial

year, of which the first installment of Rs 85.2 crore has been recived so far. 60%

of the amount would be spent on the wages of the workers and the remaining

40% on material.43 This web based system, (http://www.nrega.nic.in) facilitates

for online data entry, and issuing job cards etc. In first phase, it was implemented

in four district Hosiarpur, Jalandhar, Amritsar and Nawanshahar. From this

financial year, it has been replicated in all the remaining 16 district also which are

now covered under the project.

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA)

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is an effort to universalize elementary education

by community-ownership of the school system. It is a response to the demand for

quality basic education all over the country. The SSA program is also an attempt

to provide an opportunity for improving human capabilities to all children, through

provision of community owned quality education in a mission mode. Sarva

Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) launched in 2001 is initiative of the Government of India,

which presents it sguidelines, planning methodology, data on elementary

education created under District Information System for Education (DISE)_ list of

district covered, addresses of state implementation societies and outcome of the

research studies conducted on school attendance, teachers absenteeism, out-of-

school children, mid-day meal and many other aspects of elementary education

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in India. SSAMIS is a web based solution (http://www.ssamis.nic.in) for

monitoring progress of three education scheme namely (SSA-Sarva Shiksha

Abhiyan, KGBV- Gasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya, NPEGEL- National

Programme for girls’ education at elementary level) being run at block/ gram

panchayat level. The implementation of SSAMIS has been initiated in Punjab

State and annual target data and quarterly achievement data entry has been

started since its launch on 31st July 2008.

Punjab School Education Board (PSEB), chairman, D.S. Dhillon said 44

“We are going to launch digital textbooks from the next session. The books will

be made available online and students can have access to them anytime,

anywhere. This services will be available free of any charges.”

Pre Conception and Pre Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PC &

PNDT)- PNDT45 is a web based system designed with major objective to

monitor and improve the sex ratio between Boy and girls child by keeping track of

every pregnant women going for clinical follow- up to Hospital, Clinics,

Laboratory for the regular checkup. All the details about the women can be

entered in FORM F as in prescribed format and can be entered online in the

PNDT software. District administrative user can create separate users for clinics,

Laboratory and hospitals. The district administration can generate MIS and can

monitor on regular interval & submit to the state 46. At the central level, national

level MIS on PC & PNDT of all states will be created.

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National Panchayat Portal (NPP) and ePRI

NPP contains the dynamic portals for all ZPs(540), BPs (6096) and

GPs(2,35,000).

National Panchayat Portal (NPP, http://Panchayat.nic.in) as Fron end

solution for all PRIs were prepared by NIC and launched during the VII Round

Table Conference atJaipur.NIC is responsible to steer the project as main &

primary software solution provider. Aiming at strengthening three-tier Panchayati

Raj Institutions (PRIs) in the state, the functioning of Gram Panchayats in Punjab

will be strengthened through computertization under ePRI scheme of National e-

Gram Panchayats. The ambitious scheme to connect all Gram Panchayats (GPs)

with national e-Governance would be launched in all the district and 90% cost

would be borne by the Center and balance by the state. The Punjab Government

is committed to adopting ePRI scheme on priority basis with a view to putting this

plan into practice. The proposed scheme would bring about improved

governance and service delivery through GPs and enable greater accountability

of PRIs to the community and other authorities.47

Rural Development and Panchayat Minister Rajit Singh Brahmpura48 said

the scheme to connect all panchayats would be launched soon. He said the ePRI

scheme would be adopted on priority and project report and been submitted for

the national panchayat portal. He added that the 73 rd amendment to the

Constitution had provided for funds for PRIs. Now e-PRI, a centrally sponsored

scheme for e-Governance in PRIs, would be introduced, he said. The scheme

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would improve governance and service delivery through panchayats, ensure

accountability of the PRIs to the community and authorities, the minister said.49

PVSIS (Punjab Vidhan Sabha Information System) PVSIS Covers

personal details of MLAs with related information about the working of Sessions

that is:

 About the list of business,

 Questions asked in the session,

 Bills and resolutions passed in the Vidhan Sabha,

 Calling attention notice of Vidhan Sabha,

 Information about the previous Vidhan Sabha (Information regarding

sessions held, sittings of the sessions etc),

 Other support services related to Pensioners,

 Status of MLAs Bill (regarding salary allowance, TA/DA bills,

reimbursement of telephone & medical bills etc),

 General information about Council of Ministers, Prime Minister, Chief

Minister, Governors, Spearkers, Depury Speakers, MPs and former MPs

from Punjab.

 Database of officers of Punjab Vidhan Sabha,

 Current News and Information about meetings of the Committees, etc.

 Some other initiatives taken by government of Punjab are:

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CIS (Certificate Issuance A bilingual application for issuance of
various certificates likece covering
System)
Backward Area, Caste Certificate,

Income Certificate, Rural Area

Certificate, Kandi Area Certificate,

Neem Pahari Area Certificate, Other

Backward Class Certificate, Residence

Certificate, Schedule Caste Certificate,

Sub-Mountain Area Certificate etc.

Successfully implemented at Sangruru

district.
PBIS (Budget Preparation and Offers automated solution for Budget
preparation for Government of Punjab
Information System)
EEMS (Employment Exchange Performs all the operations of an
employment exchange including
Management System)
registration, renewal of registration,

vacancy booking and submission etc.

HCIS (Handicap Certificate Facilitates the issucance of handicap
certificate issued by Civil Surgeon
Issuance System)
office. Successfully implemented at

Sangrur district.
National Sccial Assistance Provides assistance on three national
schemes Indira Gandhi National Old
Programme (NSAP)
Ages Pension Scheme (IGNOAPS),

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 Indira Gandhi National Widows

Pension Scheme (IGNWPS), Indira

Gandhi National Diasbled Pension

Scheme (IGNDPS)
Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak To effectively monitor the entire

programme and bring about improved

Yojna (PMGSY)
efficiency, accountability and

transparency in implementation, web

enabled application software

(www.pmgsy.nic.in) Online Managemet

and Monitoring System (OMMS)

e-Courts Mission Mode Project To establish LAN connectivity in all the

district courts under mission mode

project (MMP)
Arms Licenses Issuance Provides workflow of Arms Licenses
branch with tracking mechanism apart
System (ALIS)
from License generation and history

maintenance.
Birth & Death Issuance System System developed to maintain Birth
and Death registrations and issuance
(BDIS)
of certificates.
MAREG (Marriage Registration Automates the process of registration
50 of marriages at district/SDM level.
Information System)
Pilot project successfully implemented

at Jalandhar district. MAis taken up for

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 reapplication across the state.

MARRCIS (Marriage ability Issuance of marriage- ability certificate

and automates the process including
Certificate Issuance System)
noting generation, newspaper notice

etc
ICIS (Identity Card Issuance Facilitates the issucance of Identity
Card to district officials as well as for
System)
the Nambardar of villages.
ADIS (Atta Dal Information To facilitate Government for distribution
of food grain at subsidized rates to poor
System)
families of Punjab.
OPA (Office Automation For automating the file movement and
monitoring in an office. Successfully
Procedure)
implemented in the Department of

Fianance in Punjab Civil Secretariat

and department of Planning.

DCIS (District Courts Local Area Network has been

established in Patiala District Court on

Information System)
pilot basis. Replication in other Districts

courts has been planned.

E-Kiosks- A touch screen based system, has been developed to

provide the status of SUWIDHA applications, Voter list, information about various

schemes, Bus/Rail Time table etc.

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 E-Kiosk has been implemented at Nawanshehar, Muktsar and Fatehgarh

Sahib.

Web Services initiatives of Government of Punjab are Websites of all the

Districts of Punjab, Official Web Site of Govt. of Punjab, Punjab Vidhan Sabha,

Official e-mail server for Govt. of Punjab (http://punjabmail.gov.in), Dynamic web

site of Regional Passport Offices in Punjab, SUWIDHA on Web

(http://suwidha.nic.in), Intranet for Secretariat LAN, WebQMS (Web Based

Quality Management System): Web based Quality Managemetn System for NIC,

NIC Punjab Website (http://pbsc.ni.in), Domain Name Registration, Security

Auditing, Website Hosting , VPN Services (Remote Publishing facilities)

Geographical Information System, Digitization of village level maps for all he

seventeen districts, and linkage of digitized maps with village directory database.

The Chandigarh administration has taken a number of initiaties to create

the necessary infrastructure required for the promotion of the IT industry.

Establishing a Optic Fibre Cable (OFC) Backbone Network which now covers the

whole of Chandigarh is serving the main requirement of connectivity. Chandigarh

is already among the first cities in the country to have optic fibre connectivity with

Delhi, through the network of Power Grid India Limited.

Chandigarh Administration has established a numbder of centres provding

citizen-centric services. All the major departments and centres for citizen centric

services, eSampark, eJanSampark and eGramSampark are connected. There

are 7 Point of Presence established across the city providing high-bandwidth

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connectivity to Network & Data Centre. These PoPs are further connected to

departments/offices to facilitate application and information exchange.

North of New Delhi, Chandigarh UT Unit is functioning as Regional

Network Centre providing connectivity to the states and districts of Haryana,

Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir and Chandigarh.

Smart Card based Ratio Cards for Public Distribution System

(SCbRCPDS)

Chandigarh has been selected as Pilot for SCbRCPDS by the Ministry of

consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution which has approved the DPR

submitted by Chandigarh Administration. District Courts have been computerized

covering all the 19 courts.

The e-Readiness index of an Indian state/U.T. reflects its capacity to

participate in the global networked economy. Chandigarh’s performance has

been considered outstanding in the Environment Sub-Index, which measures the

degree of conduciveness of the environment that a state/U.T provides for the

deployment and use of ICT. The Environmetn Sub-Index has been computed

based on three indicators namely market environment, political and regulatory

environment and infrastructure environment. Similarly, the Chandigarh has been

ranked as a leader in the usage Sub-Index that measures the degree of

utilization of ICT by individuals businesses and the Government.51

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The application of IT for providing information and facilitation to

the residents of Chandigarh is through:

 e-Sampark

 e-Jan Sampark

 m-Sampark

 e-Gram Sampark

e-Sampark
Project e-sampark was initiated to bring together the services of all the

departments under a single umbrella and give the citizens of Chandigarh a multi-

service, single-window experience and to create a knowledge-based society

through extensive use of I.T. Apart from eradicating the undue harassment met

by the citizens due to lack of transparency it provides effective interaction

between the Administration and the public so that exhange of information and

access to government departments is speedy and easy, leading to a better

quality of life.

The objectives of this projects are 52:

Provide hassle free one-stop solution to the citizen

Minimize multiple interaction points for the citizen and hence reducing the

wastage of their valuable time.

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Provide better turn around time in receipt, processing and issue of services.

Transparency in delivery of services.

E-Governance is the most significant aspect of the I.T. Policy of

Chandigarh Administration. Project e-Sampark is a multi-service single window

system, which connects various public dealing departments.

The project has been awarded the Golden Icon Award for e-governance

by the Government of India. In these centers, 20 services are offered like

payment of taxes, utility bills, passport application, disbursement of old-age

pension and other utility services.

The department of information technology, Chandigarh Administration, has

been playing a key role by offering varied public utility services at one place e-

Sampark centers, but the entry will be made for each and every bill/invoice.53 In

the last three years of establishment of these centers, the administration has

transacted more than Rs 700 crore. In 2006, we earned revenues of Rs 350

crore, which is expected to increase every year. We are transaction more than

Rs 1.25 lakh per month from these centers 54.

In 2004 under the Information Technology enabled Services (ITeS) the

eSampark’ centres launched have already become a hit, city has 12 of them,

including three in rural area. They have done business worth Rs 1,874 crores in

just five years (till March 2009) after their launch.

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 The Union Ministry of Communication and IT E-Readiness Assessment

Report has ranked Chandigarh as leader in the country in this field. Chandigarh

has also won the Golden Icon Award for its e-Sampark Project.

The project can be replicated elsewhere because of the robust nature of

technology and the wide array of services it can provide. At present, 23G2C and

5B2C services are being provided at 10 e-sampark centres spread all over the

city35.

Benefits Accrued 56

 One-stop solution to citizen for multiple tasks, resulting in eradication of

frustration to the common man while dealing with many functionaries.

 Reduction of wastage of time of a citizen as multiple tasks are being

performed at these centres.

 Citizen-Centric centres having state of the art facilities, apart from central

location.

 8 a.m to 8 p.m service on all days except Sundays

 Transparency in delivery of services

 Easy maintenance of MIS leading to quaick reconciliation of treasury

collections.

 The project is so designed that any citizen centric service of any criticality

can be provided through it. The criteria for making new services available

through the e-Sampark ceters is absed on the requirement generated by

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 citizens, which is available through the feedback received and the citizen

satisfaction surveys conducted. Departmental initiative is also taken into

account and then an interface for the department is provided to initiate the

services. It is given due publicity by way of audio coverage, pamphlets

and notices. The departments are also given access to the central data

base for monitoring the progress and generate various MIS reports.

Following are some indicators telling why the project can be

called a best practice.

Transparency

At E-sampark centers all services are provided through the counters at

centres, where officers in the centres deal with the transactions directly in front of

other users. There is no separate dealing for any class of users or preferential

treatment by any officer of a centre. Services are provided on first come first

serve basis. The way of service delivery is a great factor ensuring transparency

in the project activities.

As opposed to the earlier system of getting these public services which

was cumbersome, through e-Sampark centres citizens can now get direct access

to various services at single window. Most of the users avoided the process and

got there services done by middle men and touts. This has automatically

142
removed the middlemen and touts from the scene and has improved the

transparency in the process of services delivery system.

Participation

It is an interdepartmental project implemented with direct participation and

collaboration of various government and non-government organization. The

location , setup and infrastructures of the centers have been developed with

PPP-public private partnership (present partners are UTI Bank and SQL STAR

International Limited). The information provider in the centres are not government

employees. They are appointed contractually by the partner organizations of the

project. The eSampark centres is based on the requirement generatd by citizens

through the feedback received and the citizen satisfaction surveys conducted.

The private public institutional participation has improved the quality and

availability of services appreciably, the people’s participation has made the

services truly preferred services by citizens.

Accountability

In e-Sampak centres, every transaction is direct, users can

question the service providers in the centre. Time taken to complete task is

specified. The staffs of the centres are appointed contractually for a specific

period and are reugularly monitored by a supervisor at each centre and the

project coordinator. The staff is accountable of each of his/her activity to the user

as well as authority. Apart from regular official monitoring various surveys are

143
conducted by the authority for the performance check. Continuous monitoring of

type of problems citizen face in the existing system and how it can be improved,

what more services can be incorporated etc. the results of these surveys are

taken into account also. All such activites promote accountability.

Speed and Ease to Service Delivery

In the earlier system, for delivery of services there was no timeframe.

Citizens or customers had to wait unknown period of time and run from

department to department for a service. The e-Sampark centres provide various

services under one roof while ensuring that users get efficient and timely service.

The time bound service delivery from the e-Sampark centres has resulted in

improving the efficiency of delivery of the services. The centres also provide

necessary information regarding all the services to the users, earlier common

citizens even did not know how to get or where to get all those services.

Moreover 12 hours service from 8 am to 8 pm every day except Sunday is a

great opportunity for the office going or busy personas who can get their services

after office time in the evening. The rise in number of transaction at these to 1.46

lakh per month is the fact to prove its utility.

Social Wellbeing

With direct interaction of service provider with the user, the web of

middlemen and tout has completely vanished. The project has eliminated bribery

144
and corruption from the process. It has helped in integration of databases of

Government departments and organization. The integration and standardization

in delivery of services and providing services to all strata of society at same

speed ease and efficiency has made a mark in the process of social wellbeing.

Sustainability

Since its launch in September 2004, Rs. 929 Crores of Government

revenue has been collected in 40 Lakh transactions. Rs. 310 Crores of revenue

has been collected in 9 months (April 07 to December 07) of 2007-08 as

compared to Rs. 272 Crores for the same period in 2006-07 (B2C) have also

been launched to make the project self sustainable. Phone bills of HFCL-

Connect, Airtel and Spice are collected and more similar services are under

process of initiation. The project has been proved to be self sustainable. Number

of service receivers is increasing day by day.

Reliability

Since last five years the project has been successfully running providing

basic citizen services to the citizens of Chandigarh. The project has been proved

to be financially and technologically sustainable. So it can also be replicated in

other states or cities also.

Sustainability of e-Sampark shows that use of Information and

Communication Technology (ICT) can facilitate better public service delivery with

145
in the existing infrastructure and limited human resources. The PPP model as

well as collaboration and partificpation of various departments has been the key

factor in implementing the Sampark centers. The success factor on the citizen

side is surely the transparency, accountability and efficiency.

M-Sampark

Chandigarh Administration uses mobile ICT to enable the citizens to

access information e-Sampark services from their mobile phones by sending an

SMS “SMENU” to 58888. A menu to services available is sent back via an SMS,

using which he/she can get the required information. The initiative of m-Sampark

service was taken to ensure that the citizen can avail information about e-

Sampark services from wherever they are. With the extensive reach of cellular

phone, it is convenient for the citizens to know of the different services through

their cellular phones. Interestingly chandigarh e-governance surpasses the need

of internet connectivity.

Amit Chandra, Partner, Barings India, suggested th need for the

government to deliver governance to each out the masses through mobile which
57
has large penetration, over 400 million, in the country.

E-Jan Sampark Project

Jan Sampark project bridges the digital divide by extending the application

of IT for the benefit of the common man. The project e-Jan Sampark was

146
launched in August 2006 by Chandigarh Administration. The e-Jan Sampark

project will enable residents to access information and avail services from the

kiosks. E-Jan Sampark project specially targets underprivileged citizens, who are

without IT connectivity. The benefits of ICT should reach the masses by

disseminating useful free information services to the citizens. 70 e-Jan Sampark

kiosks are to be set up in each sector and each village of Chandigrh.

Submission of applications under the RTI can be given at the Jan

Sampark Centres along with the statutory fee in the form of a Demand draft or

Indian Postal Order. All such applications will be received and delivered to the

Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) of the concerned Department on the

same day.

All Procedures and Forms for all departments, which are frequently used

by a common man like how to apply for a birth/death certificate including

procedure for late entry, how to lodge a FIR, various forms and procedures

concerning public offices such as RLA, Estate Office, DC Office, Municipal

Corporation, Engineering Wing etc. Education and Health related information

services, Transport and Tourism related inquiries, Inquiries relating to Passport

status, railway booking status, Train timings etc., Providing access to all

Government websites, other information like utility services available in each

sector etc., these services are provided free of cost. Nominal cost is charged

when the citizen needs any print out.

The citizens will also be able to submit their grievances relating to any

department at these Centres.

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 Jan Sampark is providing a single, efficient information dissemination

system to the citizen reducing the time spent in such activities. E-Jan Sampark

centres give 12 hours service from 8 am to 8 pm everyday expect Sunday. This is

a great opportunity for the office going or busy person who can get their services

after office time in the evening. Presently 21 e-Jana Sampark centre have been

functioning, yet people’s demands are on an increasing graph and also very

diverse.

Highlighting success of e-Sampark and e-Jan Sampark centres, Punjab

Governor and UT administrator Gen S.F. Rodrigues (retd.) said these centres

provide 28 public utility services and have collected about Rs 2,500 crores

revenue in nearly 75 lakh transactions since their inception in September 2004. 58

E-Gram Sampark

These Centres will emerge as Rural Knowledge Centres for the rural

population, Gram Sampark centres, established in the rural areas of Chandigarh

to bridge the digital divide, also provide both eSampark and eJan Sampark

services.

17 e-Gram Sampark have been planned across all the villages of Union

Territory of Chandigarh. The citizens will be able to use all the 15 G2C services

which are presently available to the Sampark Centres situated in the urban

areas. 59

17 locations have been identified to set up these Centres. These include,

Panchayat buildings lying unused and the Gram Sampark Centres will be set up

148
after reconditioning these buildings. These Centres will also have safe drinking

water facility, clean toilets, etc., as are available at the Sampark Centres and Jan

Sampark Centres in the urban areas.

The department of Information Technology (IT) today stared three new

Gram Sampark centers in Palsora, Hallo Majra and Mauli Jagran Village. Such

centres have already been established in Khuda Jassu, Dhanas, Kaimbwala,

Raipur Kalan, Raipur Khurd, Makhan Majra and Behlana.60

E-governance is a lot more than simply offering online versions of

government services. IT shall be used not merely to automate processes but

simultaneously simplify procedure and re-engineer processes. E-governance

should bring in the following:

 Any-where, any-time services to citizens

 One-stop shop for all transactions in the Government to citizen interface

 Better accountability, responsiveness and transparency on part of

Government employees

 Improve the efficiency of the government machinery & systems corruption

and social well being

 Reaching the un reached/ underprivileged

E-governance is an opportunity for the government to enhance the

productivity of their workers and deliver services more efficiently, leading to

economic gwoth. Lives of over a billion people living under poverty line and

earing around fifty rupees a day can be improved if the governments can become

149
different. Not only funds and technology advancements but mindsets of the

administrators have to be changed and citizen centric approach is needed if the

state of Punjab and UT Chandigarh has to succeed.

CHAPTER-4

150
 ROLE OF INFORMATION AND

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IN

E-GOVERNANCE AND ITS IMPACT ON

CITIZEN

151
 “We (…) declare our common desire and commitment to build a people-

centered, inclusive and development oriented Information Society, where

everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge,

enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their full potential in

promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life (….)”

World Summit on the Information society

(WSIS),

Declaration of Principles, Geneva 2003

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have repeatedly

established their potential for alleviating poverty in developing countries. In many

occasions, underprivileged people have experienced benefits in the form of;

increased earnings; better health care; improved education and training; access

to job opportunities; engagement with government services; contacts with family

and friends; enterprise development opportunities; increase agricultural

productivity, and so on. However, in probably all cases, these experience and so

on. However, in probably all cases, these experiences have arisen from highly

focused and locally intensive pilog projects that were experimental in nature.

Whilst doubts and uncertainties continue to exist with regard to the applicability of

ICTs to the problems of the poor, such projects contribute immeasurably to the

growing body of knowledge and experience that is required in order to

understand the conditions under which ICTs can be usefully applied to the

alleviation of poverty.

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 ICT can make a difference in reducing poverty and in contributing to

reaching the Millennium Development Goals1. Projects around the globe

demonstrate its potential for enhancing empowerment, opportunity and security.

However, to make a significant impact on powerty levels, ICT need to be firmly

anchored in broader, more comprehensive and demand driven development

strategies.

However, the global problem of poverty alleviation is enduring and

massive. Achieving the millennium development goal of halving global poverty by

2015 will require an enormous undertaking many orders of magnitude greaer in

resource mobilization and complexity than even the most ambitious of the

present ICT for poverty alleviation schemes to be found anywhere in the world. In

terms of their global impact on the world’s poor population, the effect of the

existing initiatives is undertectable. But in many cases their contribution is to

show the way in important areas of activity that have emerged as critical factors

for improvements in the lives of the poor through the application of ICTs to their

problems. We are now beginning for instance, to understand the critical role of

community participation, in addition to institutional transformation, culture

specificity, policy-making telecommunications reform, openness in government

the need for a suitable legal framwwork and the development of human

resources.

Generally, there was low impact on the factors that are supposed to lead

to some form of social appropriation of the technology; a highly desirable

condition whereby users of technology take over its control from the original

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implementers and design new and unforeseen uses for it. While conducting the

study, we did not see this taking place. The expectations of the project users

were not well managed. They did not feel that their use of the centres

encouraged them to adopt any form of leadership in using the technology. Their

technology awareness remained rather low and they did not feel as though the

projects were empowering them beyond the immediate benefits. Paradoxically,

the overall rating by the users of the quality of service from the centres was also

rather low, even though they appreciated the benefits of using them. We

speculate that the rural poor appreciate all attempts to improve their lives whilst

simultaneously recognizing that more could be done.

Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) including the

Internet, are generating changes in markets, private and public sectors and

economies in the more and less developed world. Some ‘sectoral’ changes are to

date small. But they are present and advancing in every area of economic, social

and political activity. There has been a large wave of investment over the past

decade in ICT for development2 (ICT4D), and some significant terms of bringing

ICT access poor communities, and in using ICTs in many other ways which

support poverty reduction.

E-government
The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has

dramatically changed government services, business models, and people’s

154
expectations of the quality and efficiency of information sharing and service

delivery.

The emerging trend in e-Government is design services to focus squarely

on the needs of citizens. One of the goals of e-Government in many countries is

to consider the web visitor as a “customer.” By in large, the predominant visitor is

the citizen. He or she also may be other government employees. Private

businesses, civil society organizations, non-governmental organizations, media

organizations, the international donor community and many additional sub-

groups. It is difficult to understand the needs of the citizen as a “customer”.

Additionally governments are different from commercial organizations and must

provide services to all of its customers instead of to certain market segments.

Governmetn organizations are entrusted with responsibilities to be good

stewards of information and develop cost effectives means to capture, store,

process, and communicate information for everyone equally. And these

customers have no choice about which government to deal with. So, e-

Government services must cover the breadth and diversity of individuals who

may have a wide range of skills, language abilities, education levels, income and

beliefs.

According to Shilubane3, electronic government or e-Government “is the

continuous optimization of government service delivery, constituency

participation and governance by transforming internal and external relationships

through technology, the Internet and new media”. This implies the transformation

of how citizens, be they legal or natural persons, perceive and experience

155
government. It is the investigation and formulation of new methods, to enable to

public to access government services. The electronic model entails a shift to the

customer, where citizens must be able to access more public services online, at

their convenience hence at ‘anytime’ and at any place4. Thus, metrics must be

clearly defined and continuous and accurate measurement implemented.

E-Government refers to government’s use of ICTs to work more effectively,

share information and deliver better services to the pblic. E-Government is more

about government- the process of reform and resulting benefits- than about the

technology. The resulting benefit can include: increased efficiency in

governments’ functions; greater trust between government and citizens from

increased transparency; empowerment of citizens through access to information;

and contributions to overall economic growth. Governments in the Asia- Pacific

region are serving a variety of objectives by adopting e-government. Chine is

using websites to inform citizens and visitors. India is focused on delivering

services electronically either by the government itself or through third parties.

Four decades ago when India faced a major challenge on the food fron we sued

biological technologies intelligently to transform a food-deficient country into a

food-surplus country in a few years. Indeed, in the early 1960s experts had

written off India as a hopeless case. But unmindful of what the experts said,

Indian farm scientists worked hard to make the transformation possible of course,

the transformation was not brought about just by science and scientists alone;

the farmers rose to the occasion and without their courage and fortitude and

156
willingness to try out newer varieties and farm practices any amount of research

could not have saved India from severe food shortage. Another equally important

factor was the enlightened political leadership and the support of the

bureaucrats; both Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and Food and Agriculture

Minister C. Subramaniam6 took the right decisions and extended their full

support to the research and extension programes.

Looking back, it is clear that without all of these falling in place, without

robust partnerships of all key stakeholders, we could not have avoided certain

disaster on the food front Today, food security in the developing world, especially

in South Asia, is dependent loess on resource-intensive agriculture and more on

knowledge intensity Millions of farms families and the rural poor need the right

information and knowledge for their very survival. ICT can play a role in bringing

about happiness to these people. Many development countries remain poor

largely because they had let the Industrial Revolution pass them by. They can ill

afford to miss the information technology revolution.

Digital happiness requires7:

Technology and techno-infrastructure- not just computers and the Internet,

but also landline telephones, cellular phones, radio, television, etc. What is

needed is a judicious blend of traditional and modern technologies depending on

what would work best in a given situation.

Content – value- added information that the people can use in the

immediate context and that can make a difference to their day-to-day lives. The

content must be in the local language so the people will find it easy to use.

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 Gender sensitivity- Men and women may not need the same kind of

information. It is important to operate on the principle of social inclusion including

the poorest and the most underprivileged.

Partnerships-information has to be sourced from different quarters.

Expertise is available in different institutions. It is therefore important to partner

with a large number of experts and institutions to be able to satisfy the

information needs to a community.

The poor are often illiterate and have no assets like land, livestock, fish

pond or productive skills. Often they survive on uncertain wage labour. Therefore,

building assets has to be the major goal of any poverty alleviation effort.

Facilitating a paradigm shift from unskilled to skilled work is basic to both poverty

reduction and a healthy and productive life.

How can we use information and communication technologies (ICT) in

poverty alleviation programmes? History has shown that technologies, left to their

own devices, will only exacerbate existing differences. Information and

communication technologies are no exception. As Jesse Jackson once pointed

out, with time the digital divided in the United State is only increasing and it is

acquiring the dimensions of a racial ravine, with the relative disadvantage

suffered by Blacks and Hispanics in inner cities increasing all the time. It is

essential, therefore, for us to use ICT in a way that would bridge rather than

enhance the digial divide. ICT should be sued as a vehicle for imparting market-

driven skills through the pedagogic methodology of learning by doing. We have

seen in our work in Pondicherry and elsewhere in southern India that the poor

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are able to take to new technologies like fish to water, if they are enabled to do

so through practical training8.

The Internet and information and communication technology (ICT) in

general have radically changed the way people and businesses communicate

and interact with each other. This has particularly applied to the way the private

sector of the economy conducts business online. After an initial dry spell,

businesses have been able to benefit from increases in productivity, as well as

improvements in quality, efficiency, and variety of the services they offer9.

Governments in contrast, began to respond to the development of the Internet

very late, even though it was based on the initiative of a government agency,

namely the U.S. department of defense. However, they are now beginning to

catch up by undertaking steps in the Public counterpart of e-business , which will

be referred to as e-government’. In a networked economy, both citizens and

businesses ask governments for the same level of services they are used to from

the private sector. Within the limits of their ambition to improve efficiency and

service, governments have been reasonably successful. 10

In Germany, a number of official government websites are already in

place, enabling people to download official forms and communicate with the

administration electronically. As determined by the initiative ‘BundOnline 2005’,

the German government has obliged itself to have all online ready services on

the Internet by 2005. But these are first improvement son a long way to go an

economy’s call for action cannot be ignored. The government needs a modern

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infrastructure in place in order to expand and improve the services currently

offered. They need to become faster, more flexible, and more comfortable.

In a nutshell: Administrations need to become customer centered and

build their offerings around the citizens, not the administrations’ convenience or

bureaucratic routines. From experience it is commonly known that becoming

customer centered does not only imply rethinking the services but also

restructuring the underlying organizational processes.

Hence many government services not only need to be transformed but

also adapted, e.g. de-bureaucratized in order to comply with the rules of the

Internet. All these developments are technology-enabled and hold a tremendous

potential for the IT-and related industries. Practically all big software and

hardware vendors, as well as major consulting firms, have already been

assigned a task in an e-government project. Today’s complex and tedious

administrative proceedings as well as the prevailing in transparencies are

primarily based on the vertical organization of isolated departments in public

administrations. These structures developed historically, even through the

necessity has always existed that they work closely together. The resulting

inconveniences and inefficiencies are evident. The internet enables both,

administrations and public stakeholders to communicate horizontally. Information

can be exchanged more easily, transp[arency increases and decision making

becomes significantly faster.

In short, e-governmetn re-democratizes the society we live in- also

referred to as e-democracy. Once e-government is fully implemented, it will

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represented one of the most impressive shifts in governance in generations and

“will offer a fundamental restructuring of the way governments operate and

interact with their citizens11”.

Information and communication technology (ICTs) initiatives to reach the

poorest of the poor are still limited in spite of tremendous interest of

Governments and developmental organizations. While many such initiatives

need to be operational zed within a larger explicated framework that is premised

on empowerment, dignity and the preservation of traditional technologies and

knowledge, a majority of ICT interventions in rural area have had a technical

focus. This technical focus often results from formal Governmental program

thrusts such as infrastructure building, providing access, and of fulfilling

connectivity targets. An increasing numbder of attempts at ICT interventions are

been reported in less-developed regions of the worlds. However, most of them

have reported results from the view pint of the donor agency that supports such

efforts. Needless to say, it is understandable, that there would be a bias toward

reporting measurable success and downplaying the inhibitors to such initiatives.

Moreover, rigorous research that raises and responds to hard questions has

been lacking in this area. The link between ICT and ICT- enabled benefits in

resource challenged environments is a new research area in the context of

information systems. The hiatus between the development literature and

traditional applied information technology literature is exemplified by the use of

the different terms like “ICT” and “information systems.” ICT is the dominant term

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used in literature associated with rural development and the use of computers

and networks to respond to poverty.

Based on technical, organizational and the managerial studies of several

examples, e-government initiatives should be accordingly derived and

implemented. In this regard, the four stages of a growth model for e-governdment

are described as: (I) cataloguing, (II) transaction, (III) vertical integration, and (IV)

horizontal integration. These four stages are explained below in terms of the

complexity and different levels of integration involve. The stages are also

depicted in Table 12 1

State I: Cataloguing (online presence, catalogue presentations,

downloadable forms)

In this stage, governments crate a state web site. They do not have much

internet expertise, and prefer to minimize risks by doing a small project. Parts of

the government’s non-transactional information are put on the site. Usually at

first, the index site is organized on the basis of functions or departments as

opposed to service access points. Consequently, if the citizen is unsure of which

department he or she is searching for, a search for the necessary agency will be

required before being able to obtain the information about the process.

Stage II: Transaction (Services and forms are online, working data base

supporting online transaciton13)

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 This state empowers citizens to deal with their governments online

anytime, saving hours of paperwork, the inconvenience of traveling to a

government office and time spent waiting in line. Registering vehicles or filing

state taxes online is only the beginning of such transaction based services.

Consequently, instead of simply having the availability of downloading a form,

and then having to take that form to a state facility, the form can be completed

interactively online.

Stage III: Vertical Integration (local systems linked to higher level systems,

within similar functionality) Information is made available through the citizen’s

local portal. The citizen- user will be able to access the service at the state or

centre level from the same entry in the local portal, because the local systems

are connected to upper level systems, directly or indirectly.

Stage IV: Horizontal Integration (systems integrated across different

functions, real one-stop shopping for citizens) the horizontal integration of

government services across different functions of government will be driven by

visions of efficiency and efficiency and effectiveness in using information

technology, but pulled by citizen’s demands for an inside-out transformation of

government functions to more service oriented ones. Here e-government offers

the best hope for improved efficiencies through administrative reform becuases

of both its vertical and horizontal integration. Such integration will facilitate one

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stop shopping’ for the citizen. Each organization may have to give up some

power to move to this stage.

Methodology

Sample selection and data analysis:

Scheduled questionnaire was distributed randomly in different districts of

Punjab. All citizens that were indentified as using any form of electronic service

provided by the government were included in the study.

Scale development: the scale of give was used where 5 is given the maximum

weight age and lesser weight age in decreasing order.

The 30% respondent citizen’s annual income is less than three lakhs,

Other 30% respondent citizen’s annual income is less than two lakhs,

While 25% respondent citizen’s annual income is less than one lakhs,

Only 15% respondent citizens’ annual income is greater than three lakhs.

Union Territory Chandigarh has topped the country in per capital income. It has

increased to Rs 1,10,676 in 2008, as per the quick estimates collected by the UT

Economics and Statistics department. 15 Chandigarh’s rapid growth can be

largely attributed to the expansion of tis tertiary sector comprising trade, hotels

and tourism industry, financial services, IT and software and real estate, which

contributed 76% to the Gross State Domestic Product. Infosys, DLF, Parsvnath

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and other software, property and investment companies have already invested in

the city. Chandigarh is one of the seven Union Territories of India and was ranked

as one of India’s most prosperous cities in a Ficci-Ernst & Youndg study, “India

Real Estate Report 2007: Growth and New Destinations” 1650% Respondent

citizens of Chandigarh annual income is less than three lakhs, 30% Respondent

citizens of Chandigarh annucla income is less than two lakhs, 10% Respondent

citizens of Chandigarh annual income is less than one lakh. 10% Respondent

citizens of Chandigarh annual income is greater than three lakhs.

Dominating citizen respondents are of Sikh Religion 50.02% as the State of

Punjab’s main religion is Sikhism. The other main population or religion is Hindu

of around 32.08%. while Muslims and other religion constitutes of 14.7% and

2.03% respectively.

In Chandigarh’s respondent citizens major chunk belongs to Hindu religion, next

major population is Sikhs of 20%. While Muslims and other constitutes of 15%

and 5% respectively.

The main religions in Chandigarh are Hinduism (78.6%) Sikhism (16.1%), Islam

(3.9%), and Chirstainity (0.8%), Hindi and Punjabi are the main languages

spoken in Chandigarh.17

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In Chandigarh respondent citizens largely belong to government job that is of

62.9%. Private job population is of 32.25%. While farmers and business

constitutes 3.22% and 1.61% respectively.

The Gross State Domestic Product of Chandigarh has the highest

component of tertiary sector which is around 78.9 per cent at constant prices

since 1999-2000, which 75.91 per cent during the year under review (2008). The

secondary sector (Industries and manufacturing ) contributed around 20.69 per

cent since 1999-2000 with 23.54 per cent in the review year at constant prices.

The contribution of primary sector (agriculture and allied activities), which was

only 1.22 per cent in 1999-2000, has slipped further to 0.55 per cent in 2007-08

at constant prices.18

In Punjab respondent citizens major occupation is farming, 35% respondent

citizen occupation is government job while 15% and 10% population occupation

belong to private job and business respectively.

As per Census 2001, Punjab’s population is 24.29 million, and the literacy

rate is 69.95% Chandigarh has an average literacy rate of 81.9% higher than the

national average of 64.8% with male literacy of 86.1% and female literacy of

76.5%.19

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In this ample, only 15% of respondent are illiterate. 85% of sample population

has received education at least up to matriculation. Now let us examine how

many of them are IT users/computer.

In Punjab the education trend varies, illiterates are 25% matriculates/higher

secondary are 29% , graduates constitutes of 25% and masters are 21%.

Though 85% of population is literate, out of it only 72.22% are IT/computer users.

So, only illiteracy is no the reason of lesser usages of e-government services.

On further analysis of 72% IT users or computer users, only 70.2% avails e-

government services. The rest 29.98% of sample population hesitates due to

technology phobia. This segment of people needs to be targeted to encourage

and accept e-government and technological changes.

The target users of e-government may be divided into five major segments

of the population viz. The IT (Information Technology) Nerds or Heavy users’,

‘General IT users’, ‘Education and non IT users’, ‘Literates and non IT user’, and

‘Illiterate and non IT user’, in a progressive manner. The rationale is that the

government has limited resources and targeting all the segments in the past has

not yielded encouraging results. Many of the existing IT users do not use e-

government facilities due to multiple barriers, national as well as real.20

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 On the scale of 5, the citizen respondent varied on their view regarding

give parameters political commitment, administrative leadership, public

involvement, IT infrastructure and Database Creation and Operational training/

Computer Education. The response of respondent citizens clearly shows that

they consider involvement of public utmost importance. So it can be concluded

the citizen feedback and survey conducted can prove beneficial for the

successful implementation of e-governance project. Moreover public participation

means promoting democracy and good governance.

There needs to be a mechanism for input through surveys, on-line

questionnaires on what the citizen is looking for from online government and

focus groups. These are just three of the means that may be used so that a

government agency, for example in a developing country, can determine that they

are going to give the citizens what they want and not what the government

officials developing the program think they want.21

Administrative leadership is another major factor is successful

implementation of e-government projects. In the administrative system the

government employees involved need to be steered to change their mindset so

that they can adopt technological changes. Good administrative leadership can

lead to this technological change. Required is changing the mindset of the

government employees who are used to working only in the manual mode. This

is a big task and needs patience and careful planning.

Majority of the people at the authoritative positions in the respective

functional departments may dislike the transparent and smooth working after

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introduction of E-governance initiative. This type of mindset is a hindrance for

implementation of E-governance initiatie and adequate steps should be taken to

prevent such mindset to influence the process. Resistance of staff is also a very

likely aspect which needs to be taken care of by initiating steps in advance and

by spreading goodwill among the employees.22 workshops, seminars, and

training programmes are required to be organized to spread awareness among

the employees at all levels23.

The large population of respondent citizens (58%) replied for awareness

of e-government services through newspaper and television. The state level

initiative of governemtn to popularize and promote e-government services has

only been 21%. On the other hand informal communication and government

official in total have been in total of 12%. Whereas a considerable amount 8.%

said they found the services by themselves because the sercices were available

at common public places. One more factor that the location of services at

common public places served as self promotion.

The e-government is being adopted all across the nation for better

facilitation of public services. It is a citizen-centric service as a government

should be that is of, by and for the citizens. Developing a project is one aspect of

e-government the other being a tough is to convince masses to try, avail and

trust these e-government facilities. Major concern is that many of current IT users

do not avail the e-government services. The success of any plan or programme

can be measured by its reach among users. The challenge before government is

how to broaden awareness acceptance and usage of e-government services.

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 Setting up useful e-government projects for citizens is a good start, but

government managers have to do more if the value of e-Government is to be

realized. They also must market these projects to the public. The primary reason

people are not using e-government services more is that they aren’t aware that

the sites even exist. Government managers need to get into the marketing at

urgent basis.

The media advertisements through newspaper, brochure, TV, messages

on public transport and subway, banner in public places road shows and

seminars would also increase e-government user population. Advertisement

space in bus and railway tickets, electricity bills, tax invoice and receipts and web

kiosks will also increase awareness of e-government services. However all the

campaigns should be consistent in message content communication to avoid any

confusion.

Raise awareness among public and private organizations Organize

workshops, events, seminars, conferences with the objective or raising

awareness about real opportunities and benefits that the ICT revolution can

bring. Prepare for long term solutions to problems by ensuring the availability of

appropriate training programs for future management of technological business

changes.24

As concluded from the analysis of computer/IT users in the sample

population a planned strategy for promotion and awareness of literates is also

required. Most difficult category of users to handle is illiterate and non IT user. In

the first phase, of progressive segmentation, ‘IT nerds’ category and ‘General IT

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users’ category should be targeted. The product can be such for which these

segments do not have to make any additional efforts on hardware or software;

also where security issues, psychological uncertainties are mininmal. Some such

areas can be road transport offices, employment exchanges, electricity boards,

telephone billing, electricity boards, municipal boards etc. Widespread

promotional efforts should be made to popularize this among first two segments

and if the other segment start using e-government services as a result of this

promotion will be a welcome development. In the second phase of progressive

segmentation the next two categories educated but non IT users and Literates

but non computer users’ is targeted.

The promotional campaign i.e. advertising, sales promotion and public

relations will change or slightly adapted and be focused on these new target

citizen group. One sufficient numbder of e-governmetn new users i.e. already

pre-specified number of target users, is achieved (which can easily be monitored

at e-government service touch point), the third and final phase of promotional

campaign is started. The last two phases are tough but the conversion rates may

be high once the acceptability is built. The rationale is that everyone likes fast,

unbiased and convenient services. One the latter two categories taste the fruits

of efficient and quick e-government services there is quite high probability of

them converting into regular users. The last segment of Illiterates and non IT

users’ is most difficult to handle but by the time it reaches them there will be

sufficient number of neighborhoods acquainted with e-government utilities.25

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 The strategic marketing as proposed by Neeraj Pandey and Geetika

should be adopted. It will bring awareness and user acceptance of the e-

governance projects.

The perception of Quality will be different for different users’ categories

having different needs but the common principles remains the same which are

providing the correct needs, at the right time to right people and above all,

satisfaction of the user after availing the services.

The respondent approximately 30.89% give availability of e-government

projects to masses of society from different strata most important factor in e-

government success. Anytime, anywhere availability is considered the most

attractive feature of the e-government of project. Second important factor for this

chunk is efficiency. 42% respondents also believes in availability most important

and second most important is efficiency. Efficiency here implies the time taken to

avail a service. Most of the working people opted for availability and efficnecy.

In the traditional model of public service delivery, the procedures are long,

time consuming and lack transparency. An e-Government initiative which puts

government services online, thereby reducing the bureaucracy, officers round the

clock accessibility, fast and convenient transactions with efficiency, obviously

enhances the quality of services, in term of time, content and accessibility. The

quality of e-government project is ensured by the reduced time that users spend

on getting official documents, waiting and queuing to get documents, traveling,

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as well as more customized products and services, error free documents, and

24*7*356 accessibility.

Quality of services provided by e-governance project has been analyzed

on the following factors:

Ease of use (like how user friendly is the interface.)

Accessibility (like cost incurred to avail the services)

Privacy (like keeping the complaint name anonymous or no one else accessing

personal information)

Local Language (in present case Hindi or Punjabi)

Infrastructural facilities (like drinking water, shelter etc.)

Ease of use is given the highest importance by the respondents and next

in order of preference is local language in which the services should be provided.

For any class of users ease can promote the usage of e-government services. A

user friendly interface and educational programs can further enhance the

productivity of e-government services.

Supplying information to the public in a language that they understand and

are comfortable with, and generally, it is the local language. Technology is

available by which transliteration from English into other languages can be made.

Therefore, the problem is manageable provided there is enough motivation to do

this onerous task.26 The respondents of Punjab were served a questionnaire of

list of services provided by SUWIDHA Centers. The most frequently used

services by the respondents are:

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 Issuance of Copy of documents is the most frequently used services at

SUWIDHA Centers, as clearly shown 22% of population issuance of copy of

document sis most frequently used services as well as of another 32%

population but both the population differ at second most frequently availed

service. For 22% counter signing of documents / NOC is the second frequently

availed service while for 32% driving license and registration is more requently

availed service. Large chunk of population around 46% availed issuance of

affidavits/ indemnity bonds service most frequently. The second more frequently

service was issuance of copy of document. The service of issuance of copy of

document is the most frequently aviled service. Earlier the citizens had to bribe

the officials to get a copy of document and had to make at least two trips to get

this done. With this service the citizens are very satisfied as there requirement is

immediately met driving license which earlier took 10-15 days is now able to

deliver Driving licenses and Vehicle Registration Certificates in 45Minutes. 27

Majority of population ranked payment of electricity bill as the most

frequently used service. Similarly the tax payment has been ranked top most

used service by 47% of citizens and second frequently used service is payment

of electricity bill. Even the payment of phone bills has been third frequently used

service by 47% and 33% of citizens.

From the above analysis, the findings are:

 Citizens need to be made aware of benefits of e-governance.

 Certain marketing strategies are required to be planned at State level to

promote e-governance.

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 Making citizens to instill faith in electronic version of government services.

 Primary concerns are reliability, privacy and security that are the reasons

behind people availing only basic services through SUWIDHA centers and

e-Sampark centers.

 Administrative mindset change to adopt technology is needed.

 Political environment especially in case of Punjab is very changing as

trend shows every five years it switches from one government to other.

This change should not affect the e-governance development. So political

commitment is required.

 The e-government should benefit every category of public uniformly. It

should reach the unreached.

 Local Language is preferred by rural citizens.

 Target the literates who are not adopting the technology.

 The most difficult segment to target is illiterate non IT/computer users.

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CHAPER – 5

CONCLUSION

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 Though a slew of positive attributes/ impacts of different e-governance

projects have been observed at the grass root level in the course of this study, a

number of inhibiting factors or constraints too have come to the fore. Ideas from

early experiments in e-governance have definitely contributed to technology

development as well as to the improvement of government practices.

A recent NASSCOM report puts e-Governance in India1 as a rapidly

growing segment with three southern states (Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and

Tamil Nadu) making significant progress. It however, suggests that to achieve

desired benefits to address the operational, economic, personnel, planning and

implementation issues, which are the bottlenecks to effective implementation of

e-Governance.

Ongoing research considers how various factors influence whether or not

an individual citizen will use an e-Government system. Successful e-Government

depends on two factors – the willingness of citizens to adopt and use the online

service and the ability of the government to implement e-Government to match

the needs of the citizen and web visitor2. The research examining the adoption

and use of e-Government applies theories based on the Diffusion of Innovations

and technology acceptance.

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Challenges before Stakeholders
E-Governance is expected to help deliver cost-effective and easy-to-

access citizen services, and improve processing of transactions both within the

government, and between the government and other agencies. The stakeholder

in e-governance include government officials, legislators, regulatory agencies,

citizens, voluntary organizations, funding agencies, and the media. In short,

anybody interested in the application of ICT for governance. Loads of hard work

has been put in the establishment of infrastructure and in-house information

handling by administration and government bodies as well as civic services, the

transmission of technologies in moving towards e-governance have been

relatively sluggish. This may principally be accredited to the following reasons:

Lack of Information Technology Literacy and knowledge

concerning benefits of e-governance

There is common need of knowledge regarding benefits of e-governance

as well as the procedure drawn in putting into operation successful Government

Citizen, Government-Government and Government Business projects. The

governmental structure is not geared for maintaining, storing and retrieving the

governance information electronically. The general tendency is to obtain the data

from the files (print) as and when required rather than using Document

Management and workflow technologies. Lately the use of DMS and workflow

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technologies has been able to find its use only in those departments where there

is perceptible lightening of workload of the subordinate staff.

 Underutilization of existing ICT infrastructure

To a larger extent, the computers in the department are used for the

purpose of word processing only, resulting in the underutilization of the

computers in terms of their use in data mining for supporting management

decisions. The time gap between the procurement of the hardware and

development of the custom applications is so large that by the time application is

ready for use, the hardware becomes obsolete.

 Attitude of Government Departments

The psychology of government servants is quite different from that of

private sectors. Traditionally the government servants have drived their

sustenance from the fact that they are important repositories of government data.

Thus any effort ot implement DMS and workflow technologies or bringing out the

change in the system is met with resistance from the govt. servants.

 Lack of coordination between Govt. Department and Solution

developers

Designing of any application requires a very close interaction between the

govt. department and the agency developing the solutions. At present the users

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in government department do not contribute enough to design the solution

architecture. Consequently the solution developed and implemented does not

address the requirements of an e-governance project and hence does not get

implemented.

 Lack of Infrastructure for sustaining e-governance projects

on national level

Infrastructure to support e-governance initiatives does not exist within

government departments. The agony is that the government departments are not

equipped to be in a position to project the sector. Whatever efforts have been

made by various govt. organizations may be defined as islands of

computerization. The infrastructure creation is not guided by a uniform national

policy, but is dependent on the needs of individual officers championing a few

projects. Therefore, the require networking and communication equipment is

either nonexistent in govt. departments, or if it exists at all, it does not serve any

tangible puporse as far as the requirement of e-governance project is concerned.

The use of econnectivity options provided by government agencies like NICNET

etc. are used in a very limited manner for data transmission purpose between

various location viz. District, State, Center etc. and is mainly utilized for e-mail

and Internet purpose only. There are shortcomings within current research and

reporting on the use of ICT for poverty reduction that inhibit the continued actions

required to make ICTs fully capable of overcoming poverty on a wide scale.

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These can be summarized as follows:

 Vagueness about which ICTs are most appropriate under which

circumstances

 Excessive reliance on processed knowledge and insffcient first hadn

accounts.

 Insfficient explanation of the contextual circumstances and pre-condition

necessary to make ICTs effective

 Inadequate explanation of the respective roles of the private and public

sectors

 Absence of explanation of why ICTs are or are not chosen in particular

development circumstances

 Paucity of solid evidence linking ICT to poverty reduction

In the rural citizen centric application, citizens noticed slippage in

response times to their applications. Connectivity and power supply often

became serious constraints. Possibly so services could have been

designed not to use these technologies in such environment. The backend

systems required re-engineering, computerization and networking. This is

the most challenging task and needed more efficient and strongly

motivated project leaders.

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Suggestions:
To sum up, ICT for development is not jus an additional theme of

fashionable tool. ICT have drastically changed access to information and

knowledge and transformed the way people communicate and network.

Developing countries and disadvantage people must not be deprived of

opportunities with the argument that other basic needs have to be satisfied

first. To the contrary, ICT have to be used in a smart way to meet basic

needs more efficiently.

To make ICT work for poverty reduction and development,

it needs

1. An adequate ICT infrastructure at affordable costs, building on an

enabling regulatory environment, innovations, domestic and

international investment, and

2. comprehensive multi stakeholder efforts to support the poor

disadvantaged and marginalized people at all levels to use the

whole range of ICT according to their priorities and demand.

3. More clarity with regard to the circumstances under which the

private sector may or may not be instrumental in reducing poverty

with ICTs.

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4. More convincing empirical evidence of the role ICTs play in

reducing poverty.

5. Clearer definition of the facilitating conditions that allow ICTs to be

effective and how these conditions were created more clarity

concerning which ICTs have been effective in reducing poverty and

how they were used

6. Better understanding of which o the many dimensions of poverty

ICTs are capable of reducing most achieving these objective will

lead to more useable knowledge that can foster greater readiness

to embed ICTs into poverty reduction prorammes3.

7. Governments, in cooperation with the private sector, should

prevent, detect and respond to cyber crime and misuse of ICTs.

8. Take appropriate action on spam at national and international

levels.

9. Furether strengthen the trust and security framework with

complementary and mutually reinforcing initiatives in the fields of

security in the use of ICTs.

10. Identify security requirements and propose solutions for the

development of secure IP infrastructure for e-services/applications

on various types of networks using relevant technologies.

11. Encourage further development of secure and reliable applications

to facilitate online transactions.

183
12. Empowering Development through : a) Improving quality of life. B)

Secure ICT applications. C) Facilitating entry into the information

Technology. D) Meeting the Millennium Development goals.

13. The recommendations for effective e-governance include:

 Develop a strategic plan to guide e-Government services;

 Understand the needs of all segments of public to make sure

the e-government system genuinely assist each citizen to fulfill

his or her human development needs; and, enable citizens to

participate in the design of e-Government services;

 Use well established system development practices to carry out

the day-to-day activities of developing, implementing and

maintaining e-Government services;

 Create a learning organization where employees are

encouraged to participate in developing and managing e-

Government services;

 Develop effective ICT governance mechanisms to assign roles

and responsibilities for managing and making decisions about e-

Government services;

 Develop ICT capabilities focusing on building a suitable ICT

infrastructure to sustain long term investments in e-Government,

nurturing the development of human capital with the

government to use ICTs for e-Government, and facilitating the

184
 skills of employees to develop and manage partnerships with

private sector firms and other possible partners;

 Provide a secure experience for web visitors by developing an

e-Government security and disaster recovery plan.

Lastly, a word of caution on any over-hyped expectations that a literature

of this king may create. As discussed earlier, e-governance is not a mere

technology solution. No one should be in doubt that technology alone cannot

solve issues of poor governance, corruption and frustrations of the citizens.

Corruptions may easily trun into e- corruption’, bad government may become e-

bed governments and the rising users’ frustrations may turn into e-frustrations if

the bureaucrats blame the computers for their poor performances.

Therefore for the e-governance to succeed, a broader reform agenda is

required, Government organizations must turn into ‘knowledge institutions’, to

match with the requirement soft e emerging knowledge-age, in which India is

coming up as a dark horse benefiting from the digitization and the broadband

revolutions4, setting a trend in the transfer of services sector jobs from the

developed countries to Bangalere and other cities in the country.

Political leaders have to aggressively move forward to initiate cutting edge

institutional reforms and they have to put in charge, a set of passionate officials,

who have the necessary qualifications to execute a plan of action to make wider

changes within the government.

185
BIBLIOGRAPHY

186
 Human Development report published by the United Nations Development

Programme has been consistently recommending for good governance and

strong institutions for fostering economic growth5. The citizens of the world

certainly deserve better governments in their home countries, and e-governance

has just arrived at the right time to meet those heightened expectations.

187
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Chandigarh chandigarh.nic.in/
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192
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ANNEXURES

198
 ANNEXURE – 1
Questionnaire for Citizens of Punjab

Name

Caste: Sikh
Hindi
Muslim
Other
Education:
1. Post-Graduate
2. Graduate
3. Matriculation/ Higher secondary
4. Illiterate
Occupation:
1. Government Job
2. Private job
3. Farmer
4. Business
Annual Income:
1. Less than 100000
2. Less than 200000
3. Less than 300000
4. Above 300000

199
 Questionnaire for Citizens of Punjab

Which of these services provided at SUWIDHA Centers have you

frequently used? (Out of these nineteen services rank those
which have been most frequently availed by you)

Sr. No. Service Name

1 Arm Licenses related Services
2 Services to Pensioners
3 Counter Signing of Documents/ Issuances of No
Objection Certificate
4 Character Verification
5 Issuances of Bus Passes
6 Issuance of Dependent Certificate
7 Issuance of Unmarried Certificate/ Issuance of
Marriage Certificate
8 Issuance of Licenses
9 Endorsement of SPA/GPA
10 Issuance of Nationality Certificate
11 Issuance of Copy of a Document
12 Issuance of ID-Card
13 appointment of Numbderdar
14 Driving License related Services/ Registration
15 Issuance of Birth Certificate/ Issuance of Death
Certificate
16 Issuance of Affidavits/ Issuance of Indemnity
onds
17 Issuance of Permissions
18 Issuance of Surety Bonds
19 Submission of Passport Applications

200
 ANNEXURE – 1
Questionnaire for Citizens of Chandigarh

Name

Caste: Sikh
Hindi
Muslim
Other
Education:
1. Post-Graduate
2. Graduate
3. Matriculation/ Higher secondary
4. Illiterate
Occupation:
1. Government Job
2. Private job
3. Farmer
4. Business
Annual Income:
1. Less than 100000
2. Less than 200000
3. Less than 300000
4. Above 300000

201
 Questionnaire for Citizens of Punjab

Which of these services provided Sampark have you frequently

used? (Out of these nineteen services rank those which have

been most frequently availed by you)

Sr. No. Service Name

1 Issue of Disability Identity Card
2 Services of old age persons Pension
3 Telephone Bill Payment
4 Payment of Electricity Bill
5 Issuances of Bus Passes
6 Payment of taxes
7 Issuance of Senor Citizen Card
8 Disbursement of pension for widows and
disabled persons.
9 Issaunce of Birth Certificate/ Issuance of Death
Certificate
10 Space bookings
11 Tenant Registration
12 Domestic Servant Registration
13 Passport Application Submission
14 Chandigarh Housing Board- Sale & Receipt of
Forms
15 Payment of Water & Sewerage Bills
16 General, Sticker and Postal Challan
17 Sale of stamp paper, stamps and adhesive
stamps
18 Doctor’s appointment for patient at GMSH and
GMCH
19 Booking of tubewell for irrigation in rural area

202
 ANNEXURE – 3

Common Questionnaire for Citizens of Punjab and Chandigarh

Q1 Are you a computer/ IT user? If yes, have you ever used it to avail E-

government services?

A. (a) Yes

(b) No

Q2. How will you rate the following Factors in order of preference, necessary fo

successful implementation of e-governance?

Factors Scale of Five

Political commitment
Effective administrative leadership
Public/citizens involvement in the form of surveys

or feedback
IT infrastructure and database creation
Operational Training/ education

Q3. Which factors do you consider of more importance in quality of Service on

the scale of 5?

Factors Scale (1 to 5)
Quality of Service
Ease of use
Accessibility
Privacy
Local language
Infrastructural facilities

Q4. Which factors do you consider of more importance in quality of e-

Governance projects on the scale of 5?

Factors Scale (1 to 5)

203
Quality of Governance `
Transparency,
Participation,
Availability (anywhere, anytime)
Responsiveness
Efficiency

Q5. How you become aware of e-government services?

Medium Tick against the option (only one)

Newspaper or television
Advertisements
Neighbors and relatives
Government officials
Nobody, I found it myself

ANNEXURE -4

Administrative Structure of Punjab

Divisions 4
District 20
Sub-Divisions/ Tehsils 76
Sub-Tehsil 77
Blocks 141
No. of Inhabited Villaged (2001 12278

Census)
No. of Towns (2001 Census) 143
No. of Cities (2001 Census) 14

Population 2001

Total Population 243.59

Rural Population (in Lakh) 160.96
Urban Population (in Lakh) 82.6
Density (Per Sq. Km.) 484

204
Local Bodies (2005-2006)

Zila Parishads 17
Municipal Committees 133
Improvement Trusts 20

Climate (2005)

Average Rainfall (Millimeter) 435.6

Area, Average yield & Production of selected Crops. (2005-2006)

Area (000, hec) Prod. (000, tons) Average yield

(Kg. per hec.)

Rice 2642 10193 3858
Wheat 3468 14493 4179
Maize 148 406 2726
Bajra 5 5 1045
Gram 4 4 864
Sugarcane 84 486 5783
Rapeseed & 48 54 1108

Mustard
Sunflower 19 30 1578
Groundnut 4 3 871
Cotton 557 2395 731
Co-operatives (2005-2006)

No. of cooperative Societies 20875

Membership (lakh) 47.17
Working Capital (Crore) 26380.51
No. of Primary Agriculture Credit 3978

Irrigation (2005-200)

Net Area Irrigated by: 000 Hectare

Grass Area Irrigated 7680
Government Canals 1134
Private Canals 4

205
Wells/ Tubewells 2914
Other 8

Energy (2005-2006)

Consumption of Electricity 24192 Millon

Per capital Consumption of Electricity 906 KWH

Forests (2005-2006)

Area under Forests (Sq. K.M) 3054

Industries (2005)

Working Factories 15301

Average No. of Workers employed in 521337

Regd. Working factories

Medical and Health (01.04.2006)

Hospitals 219
Dispensaries 1453
P.H.C.s. 441
Ayurvedic and Unani Institutions 529
Homoepthic Institution 107
Beds installed in Medical Institutions 25489

(Allopthy)

Animal Husbandry (2005-2006)

Veterinary Hospitals 1367

Outlying Dispensaries & Inseminaiotn 1485
Total Poultry (Thousands) 10779
Area Stocked with fish (in hec.) 9890

206
Total Livestock (Thousands) 8608

Education (30.09.2005)

Universities 6
No. of Arts, Home Science, Commerce 232

and Science College

No. of High Schools/ Senior Secondary 4043

Schools
No. of Middle Schools 2481
No. of Primary Schools 13291

Banking (31.12.2005)

Scheduled Bank 2807

Non-Scheduled Bank 2

Miscellaneous (2005-2006)

Post Offices 3952

Police Stations/ Police Post 456
Seats in Punjab Vidhan Sabha 117
Lok Sabha Seats in Punjab 13
Rajya Sabha Seats in Punjab 7

Source: - Statistical Abstract of Punjab 2006

207