India On its Way to become an e-Nation

Governance and transparency in government policies and processes are the main objectives within the e-governance initiatives in India. The e-governance initiatives of the Government of India and Indian states aim at ensuring transparency at all levels of government.

The Government of India and those of the states have recognized the huge potential of IT and decided to embark upon an ambitious journey to herald the benefits of IT to the people of the country.

India has realized this huge potential and, as a result, is on its way to emerging as a premier cyber nation in the world with its citizens qualifying to be e-citizens. 

With the fast pace of technological changes taking place, it is becoming important for government to review existing structure of secretariat, hierarchies, policies and procedures.

Famous e-Governance Projects in Indian States 

Delhi  

The various e-governance projects running in different departments of the Government of Delhi have made an impact on improving the service delivery system for the citizens as reflected in the recent Bhagidari workshops. These departments include transport, education, revenue, PWD, excise and MCD. The e-governance initiatives taken in the Delhi Police include the Personnel Information System for all the Delhi Police employees, computerization of police stations, computerized data on finger printing, photographs, etc. Data on stolen mobiles and cars are made available in the public domain, and are being implemented at the level of Police Stations for providing updated information to the citizens.

Bhagidari, an e-governance initiative taken by the Government of Delhi, has won accolades and praise throughout the world. 

Madhya Pradesh 

Citizens are the most important assets of a country and the betterment of the lives of the populace of the country is the main objective of government throughout the world. The MPOnline portal is one such initiative of the government of Madhya Pradesh. The project came into being to provide one-stop shop for services to all the citizens of the state - any service, anywhere ad at any time.

The Stakeholders

*  The Government of Madhya Pradesh

*  Madhya Pradesh State Electronic Development Corporation (MPSEDC)

*  All government departments

*  Educational Institutions

*  Financial Institutions

*  Other Private Service providers

*  Citizens 

Sulekha, Kerala 

The Government is an institution which works for the advancement of the country and its citizens. For achieving this objective, it takes a very organised approach of initial planning, which is then executed to achieve the best results. Proper and holistic planning can help a great deal ink achieving great feats. Considering the fact, government throughout the world strive to improve their planning process. The Sulekha project is one such initiative of the government of Kerala.

*  The Government of Kerala 

*  Panchayat

*  Local Development Activities

*  Other Local Bodies and their officials

*  District planning offices

*  State planning Board

*  Citizens

PDS Online Chhattishgarh

The Public Distribution System (PDS) is an important scheme meant to provide food security to the poor by offering essential PDS commodities at subsidized rates.  

The PDS Online was initiated in the state of Chhattisgarh in 2007 and ensured in the stopping of manual granting of allotment. Since then the details of about 37 lakh beneficiaries have been available on the server and have been mapped to about 10, 500 FPSs. It is now possible to calculate allotment of all FPS from the state directorate within 1 hour by just entering per card parameters of different commodities.

Project highlights

*  The project has facilitated the identification of about 1 lakh ration cards as a fake and their subsequent removal from the database.

*  Initially there was sometimes even a 14 day delay in communicating the allotment figures to the FPS, the new system has eliminated the delay and now the allotment details reach the end point on the same.

*  Since the time the system has been operational, there has been a gradual improvement in the availability of commodities at FPSs by the 6th of every month.  

*  the availability of sending information to headquarters and secretariat used to take 10 to 15 days in the manual system where as it is instantly available in the present system/

Project benefits

With the issue of a unified ration card database and issue of PDS commodities to FPS, the number of cases of frauds and misappropriations has decreased.

Department of Technical Education (DTE)

The introduction of initiatives and innovations to widen the spread and ease the educational process is thus of prime importance and integrated Workflow System' is one such initiative undertaken in the field of education by the Department of Technical Education (DTE) in Haryana.

Achievements

*  Increase of more than 40 % in the number of admission seekers

*  A 3 fold increase in the number of technical institutions

*  Electronic processing of more than 5 lakh applications

*  100 % transparency and satisfaction level achieved in admission

Solution

A 'Integrated Workflow System for paperless Admissions to AICTE approved Courses' project w as launched in Haryana in 2006 with the vision to reorient technical education. It involved conducting online   entrance exams for 5 courses at 7 designated institutions across the state in 4 shifts a day and them later conducting Online - Off-campus Internet - based counselling for eleven courses.

E-Procurement, Gujarat

E-Procurement system, a fully web-enabled application from the starting of notice inviting tenders to the issuance of LOI, was introduced for all the purchases and procurements in all government departments, nigam and societies under the administrative control of the state government or funded by it. The project initiated a system for transactions related to purchases and procurement of goods, plants, equipments machinery medical and surgical supplies, all types of store items, supplies and purchases, food and civil supplies stores items, printing and stationary items and all types of purchases of vehicles a, furniture and fixtures etc. The system was also used in all types of civil construction and for outsourcing of required services.

The accolades

E-Procurement Project has been the winner of the Bronze Icon Award in the exemplary Horizontal Transfer of ICT based best practice Category at the National Awards for E-governance 2008-09 conferred annually by DAR&PG, GOI. 

SEVANA, Kerala

Governments throughout the world strive to improve their service delivery mechanism and subsequently introduce many initiatives in the field. The Sevana project is one such initiative of the government of Kerala. 

The Sevana project was the first high visibility and grassroots level e-governance project implemented in the country. The community databases linked to it have been very effectively used in planning interventions in the social sector in the state of Kerala though local bodies as well as at the state level in the long term. 

Project highlights

*  The Kerala government has achieved a unique status in birth registration with 92% of the births and 90 % of deaths being registered.

*  The project has been resulted in reduction of time for disbursement of pension after order from 10 days to 5 hours.

*  The project has been implemented at 1060 centres addressing 25, 000 beneficiaries

Key success factors

The main factor responsible for the success of the Sevana project, was the fact that Kerala has the largest emigrant population of 1.4 million with a current annual migration of nearly 10, 0000. Birth and marriage certificates were invariably required by them. Every year 5000000 children get enrolled in schools. All of them require birth certificates. On an average 25 persons out of 1,000 require  these services every year. As a result Civil registration has emerged as a priority area for computerization by LSGIs. This has undoubtedly been the prime reason for the path breaking success of the Sevana project. 

HIMPOL

Considering the significance of the role which the Police department plays, many new initiatives are always initiated in the department that helps it in keeping up with the day-to-day developments. The Himpol is one such initiative of the government of Himachal Pradesh.

The HIMPOL project which started in January 2006, initially focused on the development of infrastructure and manpower throughout the State in Police Department IT and was launched formally on January 1, 2007 and has been fully operational throughout the state since. The data that automatically integrates on the HIMPOL web portal is entered from 510 police locations by the police personnel up to the level of a constable.

Project Highlights

The project has resulted in 100% computerisation of 112 police stations

Project has saved more than Rs 50 lakh per annum on unproductive expenditure of the police department. 

NREGS- Andhra Pradesh

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has been implemented for the betterment of the standards of living of the people of India and the NREGS-AP website is an initiative that was undertaken by the state of Andhra Pradesh to ensure that the benefits of the NREGS reached the target groups.

NREGS-AP software is a web based end to end ICT solution with local language interface to ensure that the objectives and entitlements of NREGA reach the wage seeking rural households.

Project highlights

The Project has resulted in significant reduction in the payment cycle to less than fifteen days. 

One of the major achievements of this project has been the transparency it has ensured in all NREGS related activities and transactions. By automating the processing and the availability of all information on the website, the stakeholders now have a crystal clear view of the whole NREGA project  

NEMMADI, Karnataka 

Governments throughout the world strive to improve their service delivery mechanism and subsequently introduce many initiatives in the field. The NEMMADI project is one such initiative of the government of Karnataka. 

Project Objectives

To provide a single window for all the government services to rural citizens in the state of Karnataka to create efficient and smart virtual offices of the state Government in all the villages of the state to bring the administration closer to the common man 

Integrated Prison Management System, Jharkhand 

Prisons are an integral part of the law and order system and this is the prime reason for the introduction of many initiatives in this filed. Integrated prisons management System is one such initiative by the government of Jharkhand. 

Chandigarh Administration Website 

Governments throughout the world strive to improve their service delivery mechanism and subsequently introduce many initiatives in the field. The Chandigarh Administration Website is one such initiative of the Union territory of Chandigarh. 

The official website of Chandigarh Administration http://chandigarh.gov.in has been designed as the face of the Chandigarh administration. The site has been aesthetically designed and developed. The website also facilitates government -citizen interaction.

The website is 24*7 accessible and usable by people across the world. 

Odisha 

Odisha, an eastern state of India facing the Bay of Bengal, is today poised to accelerate the use of information technology at the government level with a view to providing better and expeditious services to the citizens of the State. The Government of Orissa has taken many e-Governance initiatives by announcing its IT policy, which is very comprehensive and incorporates all the things that other states offer. Accordingly, an e-Governance roadmap has been drawn up by the Government. 

e-Shishu Project

The Orissa Primary Education Programme Authority has implemented e-Shishu Project, the first of its kind in India. The project has two components – Child Tracking System (CTS) and Intervention Monitoring & Information System (IMIS). Under CTS, a comprehensive database of all the children below 14 years has been created which includes their socio-economic as well as demographic details. Under IMIS, all the 14 interventions under the Sarva Shiksha Aabhiyan are monitored online.

The Government of Orissa presented Project e-Shishu as a case study to demonstrate the use of ICT and involvement of the state and district administration in delivering governance. 

West Bengal 

West Bengal has also done a lot on the e-governance initiatives. Webel has implemented a number of remarkable e-governance projects, which deliver value to citizens.  

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E Governance Champions in India

R. Chandrashekhar,
Secretary, Department of IT ,
Ministry of Communication & IT

R. Chandrashekhar joined the Government of India in 1975 as a member of the Indian Administrative Service, the country's premier civil service. Ever since, he has held a wide variety of key assignments, both in the Government of India and the State Government of Andhra Pradesh. 

R. Chandrashekhar established the first Department of Information Technology in the country and was Secretary of the Department from June 1997 to December 1999. From July 1996 as CMD of AP Industrial Infrastructure Corporation and from June 1997 as CMD, APIIC and concurrently Secretary, Department of IT and Communications, he masterminded the conceptualization, planning and implementation of various key initiatives in the State in the field of Information Technology. The comprehensive program drawn up covered, inter alia, creation of requisite infrastructure (HITEC City, etc.), strategic human resources development initiatives (Indian Institute of Information Technology, etc.) and evolving a comprehensive policy framework for adoption of IT in governance. 

He has been associated with a wide variety of organizations like UNESCAP, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and events relating to all aspects of IT as a key resource person, speaker and consultant. He has wide and varied experience in international business negotiations. He received an M.Sc. degree in Chemistry from the IIT, Bombay and an M.S. degree in Computer Science from the Pennsylvania State University, USA 

Ajay Sawhney
An Engineer by qualification, an IAS officer by profession and a champion of
Information Technology by choice. Ajay Sawhney is an experienced, modern
Technocrat Administrator.

Currently working as President and CEO, National eGovernance Division, Department of IT, Government of India. The National eGovernance Division assists the Department of IT in Programme Management of the National eGovernance Plan, framing of core policies, design of shared service delivery platforms, technical appraisal of all NeGP projects and various capacity building initiatives, including the setting up of State eGovernance Mission Teams.