Tuesday 21 January 2014

National e-Governance Plan – Striving To Touch Every Citizen’s Life Through Efficient, Speedy and Quality Based e-Governance Services

The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP)
The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), being coordinated by the Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY), Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, was approved in May 2006 with a vision to “Make all Government services accessible to the common man in his locality, through common service delivery outlets and ensure efficiency, transparency & reliability of such services at affordable costs to realise the basic needs of the common man.” Originally, the NeGP comprised of 27 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) and 8 components. However, in 2011 it was augmented by adding 4 moreprojects - Health, Education, PDS and Posts to increase the list of 27 MMPs to 31 MMPs.

An MMP is an individual project within the NeGP that focuses on one aspect of electronic governance, such as banking, land records or commercial taxes etc. Within NeGP, ‘Mission Mode’ implies that projects have clearly defined objectives, scopes, and implementation timelines and milestones, as well as measurable outcomes and service levels.

The 31 MMPs comprising the NeGP are further classified as State, Central or Integrated projects. Each state government can also define five MMPs specific to its individual needs.

The List of the 3 types of MMPs is as follows:

Central MMPs under NeGP

·                  Banking
·                  Central Excise & Customs
·                  Income Tax (IT)
·                  Insurance
·                  MCA21
·                  Passport
·                  Immigration, Visa and Foreigners Registration& Tracking
·                  Pension
·                  e-Office
·                  Posts
·                  UID

State MMPs under NeGP

·                  Agriculture
·                  Commercial Taxes
·                  e−District
·                  Employment Exchange
·                  Land Records(NLRMP)
·                  Municipalities
·                  e-Panchayats
·                  Police(CCTNS)
·                  Road Transport
·                  Treasuries Computerization
·                  PDS
·                  Education
·                  Health

Integrated MMPs under NeGP

·                  CSC
·                  e-Biz
·                  e-Courts
·                  e-Procurement
·                  EDI For eTrade
·                  National e-governance Service Delivery Gateway
·                  India Portal

Over these years, through NeGP there has been substantial progress in providing access to critical services and information to citizens and businesses. Cutting edge technology and its swift advancement and embracement has helped facilitate a demand driven atmosphere for Government services.

Over 100 Services Accessible Throughout the Country
Today, over 1000 e-governance services can be accessed across the length and breadth of the country through NeGP. These services have been enabled by the line departments under various MMPs  as well as by the State Governments that have chosen to leverage the digital service delivery infrastructure created under NeGP. Since Jan 2013, over 237 crore e- transactions have been delivered across the country.

Of the 31 Mission Mode Projects under NeGP, 23 MMPs are live and are delivering services to the citizens. Under the Income Tax MMP, over 2.12 crore returns were filed electronically in FY 2013-14 as on 31st December 2013. Under the Passport Seva Project, all 77 Passport Seva Kendras are operational. The related business processes have been re-engineered to provide a seamless experience to the citizens. Under the new scheme, approximately 1 lakh passports are being issued every week.

Mobile Devices Being Harnessed for the Delivery of Services
In order to leverage the rapid growth in penetration of mobile technology and connectivity, public services under a wide range of e-Governance projects are now also being delivered through mobile devices like mobile phones and tablets. Under the Mobile Seva project of DeitY, SMS and mobile application based services have been made operational.

Currently, 864 Government departments and agencies at central, state, and local levels across the country are using Mobile Seva for providing a wide range of mobile based services. Using the SMS Gateway of Mobile Seva, over 60.92 crore SMS based transactions have been delivered to citizens. 272 pull SMS based services are available on the short codes 166 and 51969 and long code 9223166166. Over 16.43 lakh pull SMS based transactions have been delivered so far through the SMS Gateway. In addition, 243 mobile applications (m-Apps) have been made live and are currently hosted on the mobile Appstore (m-Appstore) of Mobile Seva.

Over 1.28 lakh Common Services Centres (CSCs) Operationalized

In order to promote e-Governance in a holistic manner, various policy initiatives and projects have been undertaken to develop: (i) Core infrastructure and (ii) Support infrastructure.

The major Core Infrastructure components are:

·           State Data Centres (SDCs); 
·         State Wide Area Networks (S.W.A.N); 
·          Common Services Centres (CSCs); and
·         Middleware gateways i.e.  National e-Governance Service Delivery Gateway (NSDG), State e-Governance Service Delivery Gateway (SSDG), and Mobile e-Governance Service Delivery Gateway (MSDG).

The important Support Infrastructure components include Core policies and guidelines on Security, HR, Citizen Engagement, Social Media as well as Standards related to Metadata, Interoperability, Enterprise Architecture, Information Security etc. New initiatives include a framework for authentication, viz. e-Pramanan and G-I cloud – an initiative which will ensure benefits of cloud computing for e-Government projects.

Common Services Centres (CSCs) is a strategic cornerstone of NeGP. It provides high quality and cost-effective video, voice and data content and services, in the areas of e-governance, education, health, telemedicine, entertainment as well as other private services. A highlight of the CSCs is that it  offers web-enabled e-governance services in rural areas, including application forms, certificates, and utility payments such as electricity, telephone and water bills. In addition to the universe of G2C services, the CSC Guidelines envisage a wide variety of content and services that could be offered as listed below:
·         Agriculture Services (Agriculture, Horticulture, Sericulture, Animal Husbandry, Fisheries, Veterinary)
·         Education & Training Services (School, College, Vocational Education, Employment, etc.)
·         Health Services (Telemedicine, Health Check-ups, Medicines)
·         Rural Banking & Insurance Services (Micro-credit, Loans, Insurance)
·         Entertainment Services (Movies, Television)
·         Utility Services (Bill Payments, Online bookings)
·         Commercial Services (DTP, Printing, Internet Browsing, Village level BPO).
The Scheme creates a conducive environment for the private sector and NGOs to play an active role in implementation of the CSC Scheme, thereby becoming a partner of the government in development of rural India. The PPP model of the CSC scheme envisages a 3-tier structure consisting of:
(i)                 The CSC operator (called Village Level Entrepreneur or VLE);
(ii)                The Service Centre Agency (SCA), that will be responsible for a division of 500-1000 CSCs; and
(iii)               A State Designated Agency (SDA) identified by the State Government responsible for managing the implementation in the entire State.
Currently, over 1,28,315 CSCs across 33 States and UTs are operational. CSCs offer a wide range of services in the villages in an efficient and transparent manner.

World’s Largest, Government approved ICT Enabled Network for Online Service Delivery
Currently, citizens have benefited from over 227 crore transactions under various e-governance projects in the country during 2013 alone and it is expected that this will increase to approximately 250 crores by March 2014. In the FY 2012-13, over 75,000 rural village level entrepreneurs (VLEs) provided services to almost one crore citizens each month through CSCs. Approximately, 65% of transactions completed at CSCs are G2C services, around 40% of transacting CSCs provide financial services and around 30% of transacting CSCs provide educational services, making this the world’s largest, Government approved ICT enabled network for online service delivery.

The success of NeGP is indeed creditable in such a short span of time and has shown that significant benefits can be derived by improving accessibility to e-governance services. NeGP strives to touch every citizen’s life through e-governance services with quality, speed and efficiency coupled with greater understanding of the citizen’s needs.

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