e-Governance Initiatives in India

   e-Governance Initiatives in India

The government in India has been continuously endeavoring to provide citizen services in a better manner. There have been several successful initiatives and many noteworthy projects have undertaken in various states of India.

The present work tries to study the various e-government projects across India with a view to explore the nature of implementation of these projects, and benefits from them to citizens. Some of the successful initiatives are: Gyandoot, e-seva, SETU and SUDA. Th first such project to gain prominence is Gyandoot in the state of Madhya Pradesh. Gyandoot, arguabl has more services under its ambit than other projects.

Gyandoot is an intranet connecting rural cyber cafes catering to the needs of citizens. The present scope of the project is limited to land records and the immediate needs of the citizens that can be fulfilled at local government level.

The success of the Gyandoot project is due to: Single window facility for the citizens to avail the information, Empowered of citizens, a model for public-private partnership in providing the e-governance service to the citizen and for facilitating entrepreneurship among the rural mass through ownership of the information kiosks

To develop the area in a well-planned manner, SUDA was formed in Jan, 1978 under Gujarat Tow Planning and Urban Development Act - 1976, which covers Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) and 72 km area of 148 villages surrounding SMC.

To provide public amenities like water supply and underground drainage to the areas under SUDA jurisdiction, SUDA has assigned the experts a task to prepare repo on such works. Under the Gujarat Town Planning and Urban Development Act, 1976, SUDA needs t revise its development plans every decade.

In order to follow this, SUDA reviewed the future requirement of 2011 and prepared a revised development plan and presented it to the government on Feb, 29, 199 for its approval. SUDA is involved in overall development of Surat. Thus SUDA plays an important role the overall future development. E-Sewa is the first major initiative in the country to employ information technology as a tool to improve services for citizens. The Andhra Pradesh government launched the e sewa programme to provide integrated services to citizens of the state.

The e-sewa center is a one-stop shop for more than 30 government-to-consumer (G2C) and business-to-consumer (B2C) services. Fran payment of electricity, water and telephone bills to the issue of birth and death certificates, permits is licenses, reservation of bus tickets and receipt of passport applications, the e-sewa centers offer a wide range of services under one roof.

Internet services like Internet-enabled electronic payments, downloading of forms and government orders and filing of applications on the Web are also offered.

The e-sewa centers function seven days week. E-sewa is an extension and renamed version of "Twin Cities Network Services Project" (TWINS; which was launched in November 1999 to focus on the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad.

SETU (meaning "Bridge" in local language) or the Citizen Facilitation Centre has been set up by government of Maharashtra in the city of Aurangabad (population 1 million approx) as a one-stop service centre for citizens who have to visit government offices for certificates, permits, authentication, affidavit and other services.

The Centre attempts, through the use of ICT, to reduce the visit of citizens from office to another and prevent the functioning of touts, while providing greater transparency, accessibly and efficiency to the procedures in decision making.

Key stakeholders are the general public, especially farmers, laborers, small entrepreneurs and students who require certificates and permits. Other stakeholders are the NGOs, and government officials. SETU can be adjudged a partial success at present.

The Centre has been successful in introducing transparency into official procedures, and in increasing the efficiency of the delivery mechanism for completed applications. However, the constraint is in preparing a complete application, since it requires the support of many documents that are issued by other offices at lower (sub-district or block or village) level and these offices still have the old procedures. It is not possible to comment on the efficacy of SETU since only the top end of the process chain has been impacted.

In the state of Kerala in South India, FRIENDS (Fast, Reliable, Instant, and Efficient Network for Disbursement of Services) centers provide a one-stop, front-end, IT-enabled payment counter facility for the government payments to be made by citizens. FRIENDS is a front-end solution now i.e., it is a counter automation as opposed to a process improvement project, since the back-end computerization is yet to be completed.

The counters are equipped to handle approximately 1,000 types of payments due to public sector departments/agencies viz., utility payments for electricity and water, revenue taxes, license fees, motor vehicle taxes, university fees, etc.

The project can be considered successful, considering the direct and indirect benefits and win-win situation provided to both government and citizens.

The front-end first approach has been proven as a method of providing the services to citizens without waiting for the complete chain to be complete. However, this will not be real e-governance if the internal systems are structured to make the system smooth.

Seen in this light, FRIENDS is not a complete success as e-governance project since it is not yet addressing the governance issues.