Major e-Governance Projects and e-Governance Initiatives

Gyandoot

Gyandoot is an intranet in Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh, connecting rural cybercafes catering to the everyday needs of the masses. The web site is an extension of Gyandoot intranet, for giving global access.

The site has these services to offer: Commodity/ mandi Marketing Information System; Copies of khasra, B1/khatauni and maps; On-line registration of applications; Income Certificate; Domicile Certificate (mool niwasi); Caste Certificate; Landholder's passbook of land rights and loans (Bhoo adhikar evam rin pustika).

Warana

The primary objective of the recently launched Wired Village project is to demonstrate the effective use of IT infrastructure in the accelerated socio-economic development of 70 villages around Warana Nagar in the Kolhapur and Sangli districts of the state of Maharashtra.

The existing cooperative structure has been used in concert with high speed VSATs to allow Internet access to existing cooperative societies.

The project aims to provide agricultural, medical, and education information to villagers by establishing networked facilitation booths' in the villages.

E-Governance in Noida city

Compaq India has joined hands with Electronics Research and Development Centre of India (ERDCI), Noida, to set up a competence centre that would enable e-governance in Noida city and various other states.
Residents will be able to pay electricity and phone bills, file I-T returns, register marriages and deaths, among other things at information kiosks located in the city.

Once the project becomes fully operational citizens can pay utilities, get grievance redressal and a variety of other essential jobs through these info kiosks.

"RajNidhi": Information kiosks

"RajNidhi" is a web enabled information kiosk system developed jointly by Rajasthan state's Department of Information Technology and Rajasthan State Agency for Computer Services (RajComp).

Earlier on March 23, 2000, Nayla became the first village of Rajasthan to have a "Raj Nidhi Information Kiosk" when the US President, Mr. Bill Clinton visited this village to observe the functioning of a Gram Panchayat.

"Raj-SWIFT": Rajasthan government's Intranet

The Rajasthan States Department of Information Technology (DoIT) has developed Governments own Intranet called as "raj-SWIFT". SWIFT here stands for Statewide Intranet on Fast Track.

This system which has been built using Internet technology and tools, would facilitate online data, text and e-mail communication between the office of the Chief Minister and all the 32 District Collectors on one-to-one basis, thus bringing the Chief Executive of the State and the district administration close enough to be just a mouse click away.

Mechanism of Single Window Clearance System

To overcome the inordinately long time required to obtain the statutory approvals/licences etc. from various government departments/agencies, the Bureau of Industrial Promotion & Office of the Commissioner (Investment & NRIs), Government of Rajasthan, has introduced a Single Window Clearance System through a Single Composite Application Form.

Centre for Electronic Governance, Ministry of Information and Technology, Govt. of India

The MIT website features the Centre for e-governance set up by the Ministry of Information and Technology (MIT), Govt. of India.

Apart from offering e-governance solutions and services, the Centre showcases applications by various IT majors like C-DAC, CMC, IQ Virtuals, Microsoft, NIC and Oracle. This list will expand soon.

The Centre aims to offer services such as technical consultation, proof of concept and thematic presentations, apart from creating awareness amongst decision makers at the Central and State level and helping them in defining and implementing process and policy changes for effective e-Governance.

Centre for Electronic Communities

The IBM Centre for Electronic Communities, Institute for Electronic Government, is a leadership resource in strategy, policy and development of online resources in Government, education and healthcare.

Commonwealth Secretariat's Centre for Electronic Governance

As part of its activities on Public Services Management, as mandated by the Commonwealth Programme "Towards a New Public Administration", the Management and Training Services Division of the Commonwealth Secretariat has announced the launch of a special focus centre under the name of The Centre for Electronic Governance. Currently the Centre is a virtual organisational entity.

The status of the Centre's physical manifestation is the subject of discussions and consultations with a number of organisations and institutions.

National Informatics Centre

This is the site if a premier IT organization in India which provides state-of-the-art, solutions for the IT needs of the Government at all levels

The NIC home page gives access to a comprehensive Directory(http://goidirectory.nic.in/) providing links to web sites of Government of India Ministries, Departments, States, Organizations, Union Territories.

Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances

This is a section of the website of the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances under the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions of the Indian Government.

It has well categorized links to E-Governance initiatives from around the world and a review of the Indian experience with E-Governance.

eGov 2.0 is an evolutionary step towards a more efficient, inclusive and participative government through adoption of a set of new trends in business models, operational models, financial models and technological models. Gov 2.0 is about "putting government in the hands of citizens.” The government’s role is to provide open data, web services, and platforms as an infrastructure.

A website is just the beginning of eGov. In departments’ websites, FOUR stages can be identified: One, just basic website; Two, Interactive website in the form of email, feedback, and downloadable forms; Three, complete and secure transactions based; Four, Transformation based . There have also been efforts to use of Social Media (Facebook, blogs etc.) to get citizens feedback. This is being called eGov 2.0

The e-District initiative of Government of India has been identified as one of the Mission Mode Projects at the State level ,aims at providing support to the basic administrative unit i.e. "District Administration" to enable content development of G2C services, which would optimally leverage and utilize the three infrastructure pillars, the State Wide Area Network (SWAN) for connectivity, State Data Centre (SDC) for secure and fail safe data storage, and Common Service Centers (CSCs) as the primary front-ends for service delivery to deliver services to the citizens at their doorstep.

Districts are the de facto front-end of government. The eDistrict project was conceptualized to improve Government-to-Consumer or G2C interaction and enhance the efficiencies of the various Departments at the district-level to enable seamless service delivery to the citizen.

Front-ends under the scheme, in the form of citizen facilitation centers, are envisoned to be built at District, Tehsil, Sub-division and Block levels. Village-level front-ends would be established through Common Services Centres (CSCs) for delivery of services.

The most important factors leading to failure of many eGov projects are following :

(1) The plans are made without clear objectives, unclear roles and responsibilities. There are no parameters for financial controls.
(2) The consultants taken by the Government at time totally misunderstand the Governance process and the institution of Government.
(3) The resistance created by top leadership is the third step towards e-Governance failure.
(4) Vendor driven e-Governance therefore is the fifth cause that leads to failure in e-governance projects.
(5) e-Governance initiatives spearhead from the Ministries of Information Technology, as if e-Governance is about IT and not Governance.
(6) Unachievable timelines and race to achieve them is further a cause of e-Governance failure.
(7) The National e-Governance Plan in India has been institutionalized by setting up of an e-Governance Program Management Unit (EGMPU) which is one of the initiative towards institutionalization of e-Governance in India. However the states still follow the individualized e-Governance which leads to failure after the e-champions leaves.
(8) Witch hunting of the reformers is another constraint in e-Governance implementation. The reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new.
(9) Creating front offices without any back office integration is another cause of e-governance failure.

e-Governance Initiatives Launched Under the Digital India Programme :

(1) Shrimp price Information over SMS by a missed call

MPEDA is providing price related market information of Vannamei shrimp and BT shrimp to farmers over SMS on a missed call to a predetermined number. On receipt of the missed call, information on price of Vannamei shrimp and BT shrimp for different grades in major markets like Japan, USA and EU are provided by SMS. The prices (indicative C&F price in Indian Rupee) are obtained from INFOFISH (an Inter governmental organization of FAO) published data. The price information to farmers will provide them the current market trends enabling them to make an informed decision on harvest of their produce. The service is provided free of cost to farmers. The information can be obtained by farmers all over India. MPEDA hopes that this information power about shrimp prices will empower the farmers to get better price realization.

(2 ) mKRISHI – Mobile App for Aquaculture Operations

Currently farmers are keeping the records in manual form on a sheet of paper which may not provide them with on growth and trend of the aquaculture operations. This App will provide an easy tool for book keeping, advisory services and weather informations. It is an Android mobile application which has been developed by MPEDA and TCS Innovation Lab, Mumbai (as part of its CSR initiative). Farmer will require an android mobile handset (post 2013 models) with a data/GPRS connection (2G, 3G or WiFi). The Farmer has to enter the basic information regarding his farming activities. The farmer gets expert guidance for all operations thereafter making his operations both economical and profitable. The reports can be seen in the graphical format. An option to view the trends or reports in the computer is also provided to give seamless data entry and visualization. The mobile App is expected to revolutionalize the way the farm activities are carried out. The App being used in a large scale can provide the trend of aquaculture activities across the country. It will also help in resolving to farmer’s issues quickly on a more personalized approach.

(3) Online MPEDA Registration portal for Exporters

Registration of an exporter with MPEDA is a mandatory requirement under MPEDA Act, 1972. Presently the registration process is being done manually. The exporters are required to submit a physical application in the prescribed format along with certain mandatory documents.In the new system developed by NIC, exporters are expected to fill in their application form online with their log in ID also pay the fee online for which a payment gateway has been used. The mandatory documents are to be scanned and uploaded online by the applicant which will be verified by the registering authority. After due process the Certificate of registration will be generated. The stakeholders, mainly the exporters, will be benefitted by reduction of processes, time delay, transparency, status updation. The objective of the new system is to facilitate ease of doing business and thereby provide the enabling environment for exporters to export more seafood from India.

(4) MPEDA Portal - www.mpeda.gov.in

In order to provide extensive information in public domain on various aspects of marine products sector, MPEDA has revamped its website. The website has both static and dynamic pages on MPEDA, Exports, Production of Capture Fisheries, Culture Fisheries, Ornamental Fish, Services for Exporter, Farmer, Fishermen etc, Trade and Quality Control. Marine products of India are going to get a fillip in the international markets with the exhaustive information about it in the new website. It will provide links to all important sites on fish & fishery products and export & marketing.

(Courtesy - The Society for Promotion of e-Governance)