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Article Title: E-GOVERNANCE: 20 Hot eGov Projects in IndiaURL: http://dqindia.ciol.commakesections.asp/03101501.aspSection: Top StoriesAuthor Name:Author Email:------------------------------------------------------------

The ubiquitous mouse has a special place in the Indian psyche. It is revered as the vehicle of Lord Ganeshathe remover of allobstacles. 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 thosetouts hanging around public offices. Public accountability and responsive services seem suddenly just a blip way. Welcome to thetransforming potential of eGovernance

The term eGovernance has different connotations:

E-administrationThe use of ICTs to modernize the state; the creation of data repositories for MIS, computerisation ofrecords.

E-servicesThe 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.

eGovernanceThe use of IT to improve the ability of government to address the needs of society. It includes thepublishing of policy and programme related information to transact with citizens. It extends beyond provision of on-lineservices and covers the use of IT for strategic planning and reaching development goals of the government.

E-democracyThe 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 couldinclude online disclosure policies, online grievance redress forums and e-referendums. Conceptually, more potent.

Global shifts towards increased deployment of IT by governments emerged in the nineties, with the advent of the World Wide

Web. What this powerful means to publish multimedia, support hyperlinked information and interactive information meant was aclearer avenue for G to C interactions and the promise of the attainment of the goals of good governance. Governments weigheddown by the rising expectations and demands of a highly aware citizenry suddenly began to believe that there can be a newdefinition of public governance characterized by enhanced efficiency, transparency, accountability and a citizen-orientation in theadoption of IT enabled governance.

Origins in IndiaE-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, taxadministration etc. The efforts of the National Informatics Center (NIC) to connect all the district headquarters during the eightieswas a watershed. From the early nineties, e-governance has seen the use of IT for wider sectoral applications with policyemphasis on reaching out to rural areas and taking in greater inputs from NGOs and private sector as well. There has been anincreasing involvement of international donor agencies such as DfID, G-8, UNDP, WB under the framework of e-governance fordevelopment.

While the emphasis has been primarily on automation and computerization, state endeavours to use IT include forays intoconnectivity, networking, setting up systems for processing information and delivering services. At a micro level, this has rangedfrom IT automation in individual departments, electronic file handling, access to entitlements, public grievance systems, servicedelivery for high volume routine transactions such as payment of bills, tax dues to meeting poverty alleviation goals through the

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promotion of entrepreneurial models and provision of market information. The thrust has varied across initiatives, with somefocusing on enabling the citizen-state interface for various government services, and others focusing on bettering livelihoods.

The eGovernance marketThe Economic Times recently reported that the government in India is emerging as the fourth largest vertical spender oninformation technology after the telecom, manufacturing and banking and finance industries. According to Gartner estimates, theIndian government has spent around 1 billion USD on information technology in 2002. This includes the expenditure of theCentral and state governments on hardware, software, telecommunication equipment, telecommunication services, and ITservices, but excludes salary costs of IT staff. In fact, the government accounted for 9 per cent of the total IT spend in India forthe 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 20states/union territories already have an IT policy in place. In terms of basic computerization, police departments, treasury, landrecords, 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 computerisingtheir operations. The pressure to be IT-savvy is not only to keep with times, but comes from a more pragmatic dimension; loansto governments from multilaterals have now become more or less contingent upon a proper treasury management system whichtranslates into a computerised system that will tell lending institutions what has happened to the money that it has lent. Currently,Indias manual treasury systems dont permit this with the kind of transparency required.

For governments, the more overt motivation to shift from manual processes to IT-enabled processes may be increased efficiencyin administration and service delivery, but this shift can be conceived as a worthwhile investment with potential for returns. As isevident in the celebrated case of Saukaryam (Vishakapatnam, AP), computerization and more efficient back-end processes canactually imply revenues for governments. Saukaryam is self-sustaining and does not require government funding. Moreimportantly, the real spin-off is in the enhanced image of the government as being citizen-friendly.

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Even as e-governance signifies a business opportunity for industry and a strategy for the government, from a citizen perspective,there exists an overarching concern. Not how much can be spent, but what could be achieved is really the moot point. Setting upMIS may be an important and necessary exercise but very often cost-benefit analysis is not done and public money is used up inavenues that are not meaningful.

A classic example is of buying hardware (like colour laser printers) far in excess of requirements or buying computers without aclear training plan for staff. There are larger implications of the absence of visioning. Without a clear vision, huge investments in

the name of e-governance may not really contribute to improve the quality of life of citizens despite huge potential.

MIS systems like DACNET of the Ministry of Agriculture have received flak for being no more than tools to control agriculturaldevelopment activities rather than act as a facilitative platform for informing multiple stakeholders about how agriculture can bedeveloped in India and supporting them in improving productivity and participating in markets, including global markets.

Without clear vision, huge investments in the name of e-gov may not really contribute to improve the quality of life of citizens,despite there being huge potential in this

How have states in India measured up?Thanks to e-savvy Chief Ministers like Chandrababu Naidu and S.M. Krishna, e-governance has become the buzzword forpolitical success and the key enabler to facilitate reforms. However, a cursory glance at the e-governance map reveals a highlyskewed profile. In benchmarking state initiatives, three independent frameworks of analysis seem possible. These frameworkshave been presented as possible ways to look at governments progress and are exploratory.

Assessing the e-readiness of states Assessing the stated commitment through IT policy and actual application by governments of IT tools toward reachingdevelopment goals

Applying the lens of good governance the cornerstones of equity, accountability, transparency, participation,responsiveness, strategic vision, and rule of law - to what is happening on the ground.

E-readinessThe deployment of IT for furthering the priorities and goals of governance is dependent on many factors. There are manyconstraints on realising the presumed potential uses of IT and these reflect the readiness of governments to appropriate IT forpursuing development. Among the most obvious and critical is the connectivity factor.

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TeledensityAbout connectivity in India, the following remarks by Prof. C.P. Chandrasekhar, (from the India Country Paper in Promoting ICTfor Human Development in Asia: Realizing the Millennium Development Goals) is significant to our analysis:

Data suggests that India may be on track to realise the required degree of diffusion of tele-communications technology,even if at a slow (but accelerating) pace. Recently released figures indicate that telephone density has touched 5 per 100inhabitants as on March 31, 2003, compared with only 1.39 at the end of March 1994, when the shift to a new, more liberaltelecom policy began. Since then the rate of expansion of connectivity has indeed been rapid, with tele-density touching2.86 lines per 100 people on March 31. 2000, 3.64 on March 31, 2001, 4.4 on March 31, 2002 and 5 as on March 31,2003.

While this growth in connectivity is expected to substantially increase interactive communication between distant centres,permit improved governance through the more efficient delivery of information and a range of social services in rural areasas well as expand access to the internet and the benefits it can provide, there are some problems with using aggregatetele-density as a measure of the extent of technology diffusion.The aggregate figure conceals the low penetration of telecommunications capacity and a high degree of urban andregional concentration. Tele-density in rural India in 1999 was just 0.4 lines per 100 people. Rural tele-density, whichcrossed one per hundred in 2002, stood at 1.49 in 2003, when urban teledensity was placed at 15.49. Further, inter-regional variations were also substantial. As on March 31, 2003 while total teledensity in the state of Delhi was 26.85, thatin Bihar was as low as 1.32 (see Table, State-wise Teledensity).

Besides, the figures also appear to be substantially influenced by the recent growth of the mobile telephony sector. Given that avery large proportion of cellular phone subscribers are those who subscribe to the service in addition to holding a regular landline,the rise in telephone density as a result of an increase in cellular telephone connections can hardly be taken as indicative of thediffusion of telecommunications technology among those who were thus far marginalized from the network.

If we consider Public Call Offices (PCO) related data as a measure of diffusion among the marginalized, the story is ratherdiscouraging. The number of PCOs that could be converted into telecom kiosks or centres with internet connectivity stood at just10.6 lakh at the end of March 2002. This figure amounted to less than 3 per cent of the total number of DELs in the country.Further, while the population in rural areas amounted to more than 70 per cent of the total, the number of rural DELs worked outto just 23.5 per cent of the total. Finally, despite the governments efforts to reach a telephone connection to each of Indias600,000 villages, the total number of village public telephones at the end of March 2002 amounted to 469,000.

These figures are clearly indicative of a digital divide driven by asset and income inequalities, such that there a few at the top who

are connected while the majority, preponderantly in rural areas, are marginalized from the communications network.

Internet connectivityEven if connectivity in the form of a communications link is established, there is no guarantee that this can be viably expanded toconnect India's villages to the world through the internet. Despite its large population, the success of its IT industry and thegovernment's stated intent of wiring India's villages, India today lags far being many other developing countries in terms of thebandwidth necessary for people to simultaneously access information flow through the Internet. In 2001, the InternationalTelecommunications Union estimated bandwidth availability in India at 1475 megabits per second (Mbits/sec), as compared with2639 in Singapore, 5432 in South Korea, 6308 in Hong Kong and 7598 in China.

A composite measure of e-readiness that places e-governance initiatives alongside other IT achievements has been employed byNCAER in a national level survey. The survey rated the states' performance on six broad parameters - network access, networklearning, network policy, network society, e-governance, and network economy.

Even though performance on e-governance is one of the parameters in this survey, one can argue that the effectiveness of e-governance may itself be implicitly dependent on the other parameters constituting e-readiness.

Open Source is taking off because buying and upgrading proprietary software is expensive. It is safer to entrust knowledge in thepublic domain to Open Source, which is also in the public domain, than to proprietary platforms

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The parameters are described below:

Network access included indicators such as tele-density, percentage of households with phones and cable TV, cellularphones, number of PCs and Internet connections, average price per hour of Internet use, number of cellular operators,telecom staff per 100 lines, and the number of villages covered under the village public telephone network.

Network learning was monitored in terms of percentage of colleges and schools with Internet access and computer labs,universities offering infotech courses, number of websites of schools and colleges, number of registered training centres,percentage of students passing out from ICT courses, percentage of IT-qualified teachers, and percentage of governmentemployees covered under online training programmes.

Network policy was evaluated on the governments' efforts to address issues related to telecom, e-commerce taxation,presence of IT policy, and cyber laws.

Under e-governance, the study monitored rural connectivity; IT applications in agriculture, education, and health services;and, computerisation of land records.

Network society and economy were measured by the number of online companies, local language websites, and numberof households having access to Internet. The number of IT parks, employment in the IT parks, and sales turnover of thecompanies in the IT parks were also taken into consideration.

The NCAER survey identified Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Maharashtra as the leading States in terms of "e-readiness". It must be mentioned here that the parameters may provide crude proxies to understand the relative performance ofstates across different IT-related parameters, but nascency in the process of ascribing weightages to the parameters makesranking a difficult exercise. Also, we must bear in mind that the parameters described cover e-readiness for embracing the ITrevolution rather than e-governance per se.

IT Policy and IT initiatives - Taking a human development perspective to look at states

IT policesThis section will take a look at IT policies in the various states and examine them from how governments have conceptualized theuse of IT to meet development goals. While it is important to critique failures in implementation, it is equally important to look atstatements of intent and identify their lacking. The breadth of vision obviously has a critical role to play in the length ofachievement. Interestingly, at least two states - Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh - have redefined their policies, bringing out thesecond version, in the light of the rapidly changing macro context and to plough back their own learnings. In our analysis of statepolicies, six areas of focus - agriculture, health, education, local language, welfare of socially disadvantaged groups and e-governance - have been selected to scan through these policies. Some broad observations follow:

Agriculture is an area conspicuously absent in policies. Even in a predominantly agrarian state like Haryana, there is nomention of use of IT in agriculture extension.

References to the use of IT for health is confined to few policies and even here, there is a lack of clarity on how exactly ITcan help the larger goal of health.

IT literacy (learning IT) is dealt with in great detail by most governments. However, there is very little reference to the useof IT as a learning tool (learning through IT). Karnataka is one of the few states that has discussed the potential of multi-media applications to promote literacy. Many policies have a narrow emphasis on IT education, focusing on employment inlow skilled jobs in data entry, marketing, transcription, call centres, content creation and data processing. Some even lookat this as a revenue spinner. Clearly, this is a short-term and narrow perspective.

Development of applications in local languages has been promised in many policies, but the depth of perspective on whatneeds to be done to evolve standards, promote local language content and applications and appropriate hardware, islimited to few states like Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

The use of IT to help the socially disadvantaged, including in terms of promotion of enterprises by socially disadvantagedhas received attention from very few states. Even where IT is seen as having potential for empowering women and theeconomically disadvantaged, like in the case of Karnataka, the vision is operationalised in terms of creating beneficiarydata bases to monitor programmes and automating social welfare departments. The emphasis is on managingprogrammes rather than on empowering people.

E-governance is limited mostly to e-services and vision on how IT can help governments to interact, transact and elicitcitizen participation in agenda-setting is absent. GIS, which can be a critical tool for mapping resources and requirementsis sought to be used in very few states like Andhra Pradesh.

One overall observation is that there seems to be a lack of clarity of vision in conceptualizing and operationalising the power of ITfor development. It might be worthwhile for states to revisit their policies a la Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

In 2001, the ITU estimated bandwidth availability in India at 1.5 Gbps, compared to 2.6 Gbps in Singapore, 5.4 Gbps in S Korea,6.3 in Hong Kong and 7.6 in China. We have come some way since then, but its a long road ahead...

E-governanceAlthough policies may have lofty goals, much seems to have happened only in automation and computerization. All states andunion territories, except Daman and Diu, have a web presence. However, few have progressed to delivering e-services. Evenamong them, efforts are in pockets. E-seva is perhaps one of the few e-service initiatives that now has a clear roll out plan tocover all municipalities in Andhra Pradesh. Despite these trends, it must be said that while five years ago IT was the handmaidenof few states like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, today most seem to have jumped on to the bandwagon (see table, Some E-governance Initiatives).

Very few initiatives in India seem to have ventured into the more complex areas that transcend the efficiency and managementconcerns of governments and put in place programmes addressing quality of life issues. Tremendous possibilities exist in thesedomains. For example, states can use IT for:

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Services that increase productivity and income of communities -like Warana, Maharashtra; DISK, Gujarat Agriculture extension/Better returns for produce - like Krishi Marata Vahini, Karnataka Service delivery in health - like the Telemedicine Projects in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh Service delivery in Education - like Head Start, Madhya Pradesh; Community Learning Centre, Karnataka; Akshaya,Kerala

Disaster management - like Flood Management, Bihar; Earthquakes Management, Maharashtra Use of IT based tools for planning and decision making - like the India Health Care project, Rajasthan

Through the lens of good governance The touchstones to assess the various initiatives in e-governance have to essentially come

from expectations of good governance. In that sense, the success of e-governance is not about technological marvels; rather, it isabout whether and how good governance has been attained through technology. If we were to operationalise the touchstones, itwould encompass the dent that IT interventions have made not only on the goals of efficiency and effectiveness, but equity,transparency, accountability, participation, responsiveness, strategic vision and rule of law. Assessing states by these is aresearch project in its own right and there is no conclusive evidence on relative performance of states. However, we can attemptto look broadly at how states have attempted to address these goals.

EquityThe goal of equity addresses the special responsibility of governments to account for the needs of the marginalized. Manyinitiatives that reach information about policies and programmes and deliver government documents are attempts to reachentitlements to rural populations. In many contexts, such as in the RASI Maiyams of Kanchipuram and the e-seva initiative inWest Godavari, micro-enterprise models for promoting employment through kiosks have focused on socially disadvantagedpopulations. E-seva runs through self-help groups of women in the villages. The partnership between the Government ofKarnataka and the Azim Premji Foundation to establish and run community learning centres in the schools in rural areas,

especially in certain backward districts aims at equipping the rural schools with state of the art learning resources driven by IT.We do not have data on the profile of rural users, and whether socially disadvantaged sections of society enjoy equal access toIT mediated governance initiatives. However, it can be said that governments at this stage have not done enough to look at howIT can address the needs of the poor in general and poor women in particular, towards economic and social empowerment. Sucha neglect is also seen in the absence of programmes for the urban poor.

The goal of equity can be operationalised at many levels since the digital divide itself is a story of multiple divides. However,ground-level evidence reflects attention primarily to the urban-rural divide, and inadequate focus to the concerns of the illiterate,of marginal farmers, and women.

Outcomes in terms of equity also have to do with how despite intentions, processes at the grassroots are influenced by context-specific factors and therefore everything from the location of a kiosk, the pricing of government information to cultural barriers tomobility could impact actual access by the marginalized. Also, e-governance efforts may be built willy-nilly on the super-structureof societal inequities, and therefore what you have after IT came in is no different from what existed hitherto.

Constraints that governments face in operationalising equity in their e-governance initiatives is illustrated in the Bhoomi exampleCentral to the Bhoomi project is the computerised system of producing a farmers Record of Rights Tenancy & Crops, an all-important identity paper needed by the farmer to obtain bank loans (for diverse activities ranging from children's education tobuying seeds), settle land disputes and even use as collateral for bail. It is no less than a social ID.

A recent article by Keya Acharya, a development journalist in Bangalore, talks about how the problem with Bhoomi is that thestate government did not tackle fraudulent land records that went online in the Bhoomi project. Secondly, unlike the villageaccountant (corrupt or otherwise) who used to be at the village, the Bhoomi kiosks are located at taluka headquarters, whichimplies costs in terms of time and money for a poor villager.

Transparency and accountabilityRobert Klitggard of RAND has an interesting equation to explain corruption : C = M+D-T. Corruption = Monopoly + Discretion -Transparency. In India, the state holds an absolute monopoly over most of the delivery of basic 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 thepotency of technology to enhance transparency and accountability in matters of governance.

Bangalore City Corporation has recently introduced the Fund 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 theinformation to the public domain. This highly enabling framework of integrating backend reforms with front-end outreach hasvirtually galvanized civic participation by applying this credible and open information base to monitor the activities of the localgovernment.

This initiative (called PROOF -Public Record of Operations and Finance) is an advocacy campaign that uses the quarterlystatement of the corporation as a tool to take information about the financial performance of the corporation to citizens. It seeks tobring multiple stakeholders together in an exercise to track financial statements of the government, develop performanceindicators for different expenditures, and create a space for management discussion. It seeks to ask the basic question, where isthe 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 theseassets are being used, and also the examination of whether development expenditure, like in education, is giving value formoney.

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Another highly enabling application has been in the field of procurement. Bids and tenders for public works are widely perceivedto 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 andaccountability. By openly committing to standards and norms, public agencies are now holding themselves to account. Andtechnology has dramatically altered the ease of public access.

However, there a few downsides to this encouraging scenario. In many cases, the government websites seldom get updated andtherefore public information is rendered obsolete. The cutting edge of the Internet is its dynamic interface and if that organizingprinciple is truncated, the relevance of the medium ceases to exist. The problem of the last mile also looms large.

With a highly skewed pattern of teledensity and the highly disabling profile of rural illiteracy, the reach of the Internet remainsexclusive and limited. This means that online information put out by governments may not actually be accessed. Also, civilsociety groups in India are yet to engage with the government on the basis of what is available on the net. Though there are noshort cut solutions to these basic problems, a major onus seems to lie upon NGOs to bridge the digital divide by connecting thenew information now made available to the voices of the unconnected.

Any new paradigm shift brings with it new risks. The dictum holds good for e-governance too. Some of the unmanaged riskscould include misuse of private information bases like land records and demographic profiles, privacy and confidentiality issuesarising from the lack of protection to personal identities of the citizens (for example, a potential to sell citizen profiles to corporates

for focused marketing). Another unmana-ged risk is the potential for the emergence of new toutskiosk operators who mayovercharge, or middle-men in the procurement of IT hardware and software.

Another unmanaged risk is the potential for the emergence of new toutskiosk operators who may overcharge, or middlemen inthe procurement of IT apps and hardware

Participation and responsivenessThe essence of a true democracy rests upon a healthy contestation of a plurality of views. One undisputed impact of the ICTrevolution is the widening of the space for participation and contestation. Space and hierarchy have been virtually decimated bythe Internet. This of course, has also meant that traditional power structures have been reoriented and the sarkar-janata relationsare showing a shift from a provider-beneficiary mode to facilitator-participant one. How have governments in India responded tothis 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 thatstates are by and large, not responsive. For example, though many of the key political figures, such as our ministers and MPsand Chief Ministers have published their email addresses, in reality, most do not respond to e- mails.

The Ministry of Agriculture has an interesting project that provides e-extension services through computer kiosks in some Indianstates. The success of this endeavour in Ranga Reddy district in Andhra Pradesh is primarily due to the continuous flow ofinformation from officials to women in the community and the responsiveness of the officials to the queries and feedback fromcommunities. The officials use tools such as video-conferencing for regular communication with the project sites.

There are a few cases of citizen-led initiatives 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 advocacycampaigns 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 possibleonly if there is scope for representation - the stage where the space for consultations are legitimized and citizen voices areincorporated into policy formulation and operational modalities; and for influence - when the citizens are accorded right to litigateand directly impact on policy and praxis. However, the possibilities of ICT impacting on the direct representation process toinfluence policy, which some of the developed countries have been exploring through tools like e-referendums, seem to be quitefar away in the Indian context.

The manner in which technology is influencing human development in India seems to be top-down, with elite users, who use thetechnology to share information and analysis guiding the mobilization of public opinion nationally and internationally to changepolicy regimes. The more democratic face of the technology, evidenced in the use of technology by the disadvantaged and theirparticipation of in the formulation and implementation of policies, is starkly absent.

Strategic visionAs mentioned in the section analyzing the policy statements of the governments, it is critical that a deployment of IT for e-governance be guided by a well thought-out vision. While there would be several aspects of such a vision, three are highlighted.

PartnershipsEven as it is the responsibility of the government to further the development agenda through e-governance, government alone

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cannot ensure that ICT plays its designated role in development. There are several stake-holders, many times better positionedthan the government to ensure the success of e-governance initiatives.

The government does need to play a key role in providing the basic socio-economic infrastructure, on which the superstructure ofIT hardware, software and applications can be plugged by the other players. But it is the private sector that has valuable know-how. The Indian private sector has in fact, gained a leadership position across the globe and is well-positioned to use theexpertise gathered to work with the government and further development goals.

NGOs also can bring in their perspectives in promoting equity, transparency and participation goals. They have played and doplay a major role in development and have the knowledge, the experience and the grass-roots organization required to induct ICTinto existing projects and design projects aimed at utilizing ICT in innovative ways. International donors, with their long trackrecord in supporting development activities, can use their international experiences for scaling up small experiments.

Thus, a range of domestic and international partnerships (public-private, government-CSOs, and private sector-CSOs) are bothinevitable and necessary in the area.

The private sector has been playing a key role in many e-governance initiatives. The Governments of Madhya Pradesh andKerala are talking to Gartner India Research and Advisory Services for consultancy. Gartner has been engaged by the AndhraPradesh Government for more than four years now as consultant and research provider. IBM India has been closely working areKerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, West Bengal, Pondicherry, Goa and Haryana. Last yearIBM set up the 'IBM e-Government Center' in Gurgaon, near New Delhi to offer technology, support and infrastructure to helpgovernments and total service providers to design, develop, test and port proof-of-concept and prototypes of e-government

applications.

Microsoft too has been working closely with the government, signing memoranda of understanding with some of them andhelping in evolving a long-term technology blueprint for IT infrastructure.

An interesting example of an NGO-government partnership, is the RASI Maiyam initiative in Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu, whereFOOD, a Tamil Nadu based NGO has built and implemented the model. However, this is an exception and in terms of NGOinvolvement to bring in development perspectives into e-governance, governments across the board need to become moreproactive.

In this discussion on the strategic place of partnerships, one significant dimension needs to be stressed. We have observed thatthere is a wide variation in the e-governance initiatives across state governments. Some are clearly ahead and have implementedseveral projects with varying degrees of success.

There is tremendous potential for cross- learning between the states. In fact, the bureaucratic structure could be leveraged forreplicating successes in other states. Civil servants could be deputed from states like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka to otherstates and states need not look only at the private sector for expertise. In fact, Andhra Pradesh has announced that it is ready tohelp out other state governments in implementing 'e-seva'. This government to government co-operation would enable thelaggers to 'leap frog' ahead.

Choice of technology platformsFor many governments the world over, the choice of Open Source is a strategic one. This preference towards Open Sourceplatforms is firstly because, acquiring and upgrading proprietary software is expensive. There is also the proposition that it issafer to entrust knowledge in the public domain to Open Source, which is also in the public domain, than to proprietary platforms.Thirdly, using open source would enable India to encourage our own software professionals to provide software support in theform of add-on applications that could be written at a cost much smaller than that required to buy multi-featured packagedsoftware. This would also decentralize software production, from the current paradigm of large transnational production ofpackaged software. While Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Goa have preferred Linux software in their official IT programmes,

states like Punjab and Rajasthan fully rely on Windows while even Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh and the central governmentcontinue to base their initiatives on the windows platform in addition to Linux.

Capacity-buildingE-governance is not about software and hardware, but about people and processes. The early efforts of the Indian government toassign a computer to district headquarters was a major failure since there had been no strategy to address people's mindsetsand reservations. More recently, in Jharkhand, top officials have been given laptops, but most are not put to envisaged use.Some say they preferred not to use it since they had not been given training.

Capacity-building is a pre-condition for the success of initiatives. A close assessment of initiatives like rural e-seva in WestGodavari reflects the thought and effort invested in training self-help groups who run the e-seva kendrams.

For government departments, the shift towards using IT is actually an opportunity for building the morale of their staff. Capacity-building to train staff in using hardware and software can have the positive effect of boosting employee self-image and this is

most likely to impact efficiency and productivity.

Despite its population, the success of its IT industry and the governments stated intent of wiring up villages, India lags inbandwidth necessary for info-access on the Net

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Rule of lawUpholding the rule of law and provision of justice are fundamental aspects of governance. However, very few states have used ITto support these. Andhra Pradesh has an e-cops programme, which allows the law enforcers to communicate through a networkand share information on crimes and criminals.

If crime and criminal records are computerised, these electronic repositories could support the easier tracking of crimes.Another possibility in using IT in this regard is to use it to fight corruption, which vitiates norms of justice. The initiative for anti-corruption in India was led by Chief Vigilance Commissioner Mr. Vittal through the CVC website.

The website publishes the names of officers of IAS / IRS and other elite services against whom investigations have been orderedor penalties imposed for corruption. Apart from this, it also publishes a list of Chief Vigilance Officers from each Department whocan be contacted to complain about corruption.

In conclusion...Hazarding judgments about relative performances of states based on the available information is a rather tricky business. In theIndian landscape, states like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh seem to have more thought-out policies andmany initiatives on the ground, but islands of innovation exist across the board. This needs to be sorted out fast.

The future is poised on how efforts can sustain momentum and meet the load of increasing expectations and demand; howgovernments are able to learn from each other and leapfrog; whether citizens, particularly the disadvantaged, can and willinfluence the face of e-governance and the role that civil society organizations will need to play towards this; and the hugechallenge in upscaling successes. Worthy of mention here is the unexplored potential in the gizmos of a lesser god like cable TV,

radio etc.

E-governance is not just the Internet as the common perception goes and governments need to move back in a certain sense, toreappropriate the older communication tools like radio and cable TV. A critical mass of people is required to push e-governanceto the next gear.

The [email protected] to be a platform with much promise for the exchange of ideas. Finally, governmentsneed to start putting in place MIS that track user and beneficiary profiles of their initiatives and ensuring that e-governance ismeaningful to the last woman.

IT for ChangeThis article is authored by the IT for Change team. ITfC is a non-profit organization in Bangalore, which supports the info-communications needs of other NGOs and undertakes research on the social dimensions of ICTs. The team is grateful for theinformation and perspectives in the India Country Paper authored by Prof CP Chandrasekhar for the Regional Human

Development Report, for UNDP.

e-Gov 20 Hot Projects>>>>>>

Akshaya

1. As part of Keralas ambitious e-literacy campaign, Akshaya e-Centers are being set up throughout Kerala. These centers willinitially provide e-literacy to one member from every household and act as ICT dissemination nodes and ITeS delivery points inevery village. All Akshaya e Centres will have Internet connectivity and will be networked with a centralized operating center.Implementation of the first phase of the project is on in Malappuram district. The second phase involves setting up of over 6,000e-centers in all districts, expected to be over by December 2004. www.akshaya.net/proj.htm

Arunachal Pradesh Community Information Center

2. On 22 August 2002, the Prime Minister dedicated to the people of the eight North-Eastern states a new structure of localisedgovernance called Community Information Centres. Each is well-equipped with modern infrastructure, including one server, fiveclient systems, a VSAT, laser printer, a dot matrix printer, modem, LAN hub, TV, webcam and two UPS. Each center has twoCIC operators as managers and for providing services to the public. Basic services to be provided by CICs include Internetaccess and e-mail, printing, data entry and word processing and training for the local populace. Most CICs charge nominalamounts from users for services which helps them to meet day-to-day running expenses. To ensure future financial sustainabilityof this enterprise, it is proposed to use the Community Information Centers for e-entertainment.

Bhoomi

3. Karnataka started Bhoomi in mid-1998 as a major initiative to computerize land records to ensure more secure title deeds androll-back the rampant cases of corruption. The existing registry of the 20 million land records of 6.7 million land owners in 176taluks of Karnataka have been computerised and organized into a database. The government intends to sustain Bhoomi and

replicate it at many more delivery points at sub-district levels, by positioning the land records database as a killer-applicationwhich will ensure kiosk operators a minimum income of Rs 3000 a month. Bhoomi is keen on private sector involvement andoptions are being explored for partnerships with the private sector for retailing. www.revedept-01.kar.nic.in/Bhoomi/Importance.htm

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CARD

4. The Computer-aided Administration of Registration Department in Andhra Pradesh is designed to eliminate the maladiesaffecting the conventional registration system by introducing electronic delivery of all registration services. CARD was initiated tomeet objectives to demystify the registration process,bring speed, efficiency, consistency and reliability, substantially improve thecitizen interface etc. Six months following the launch of the CARD project, about 80% of all land registration transactions in APwere carried out electronically. Since 60% of the documents, Encumbrance Certificates (ECs) and certified copies relate toagricultural properties, the success of the CARD project has great benefit for the rural farming community.

Community Learning Center Project

5. Set up between March and July 2001, the Community Learning Centre is a joint initiative between the Azim Premji Foundation(APF) and the State government of Karnataka. The government contributes towards hardware and other related expenses perCLC and the Foundation takes care of management and the training of Young India fellows (YIFs) who manage the CLCs. EachCLC is housed in a separate room in the school and is equipped with five to eight computers. The CLCs are used to enhanceclassroom learning during school hours. In the first phase in 2001, 35 CLCs were launched in Bangalore, Kolar and Mandyadistricts. In the second phase beginning 2002, 55 CLCs were inaugurated across 11 districts within one month and in the thirdphase, 135 CLCs are scheduled to begin operations in 2003. www.azimpremijifoundation.org/clc.htm

Dairy Information System Kiosk

6. The DISK application targeted at the booming dairy sector has been tested for two milk collection societies by the IndianInstitute of Management Ahmedabads e-governancecenter. The project consists of two basic componentsan applicationrunning at the rural milk collection society that could be provided Internet connectivity and a portal at the district level servingtransactional and information needs of all members. DISK has helped in the automation of the milk buying process at 2,500 ruralmilk collection societies and has been pilot tested in two co-operative villages of Amul dairy in Kheda district. Software calledAkashGanga has been developed with special features to enable speedier collection of milk and faster disbursement of paymentsto dairy farmers.

Delhi Slum Computer Kiosks Project

7. To help improve the conditions of the Ambedkar Nagar colony of Delhi as well as to spread computer awareness, the Delhigovernment initiated in November 2000, an unique project targeted at the urban poor. After using the computer based learning

modules, the childrens grades in subjects like science, math and the English language improved remarkably. The community isnow lobbying with the Delhi government for more content and multimedia based self-paced educational resources. The project isalso exploring the option of providing separate access hours for girls. delhigovt.nic.in/newdelhi/index.html

e-Seva

8. Launched on the 25th of August 2001, electronic seva (e-Seva) is the improved version of the TWINS project launched in1999, in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad. There are currently 32 eSeva centres spread across the twin cities ofHyderabad and Secunderabad, operating from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm every day and between 9:30 am and 3:30 pm on holidays.Citizens can pay utility bills, avail of trade licenses and transact on government matters at these facilities. Though the e-Seva hada very lukewarm response from the citizens, the initiative haspicked up tremendous confidence on the way and has so far netteda thumping collection of close to Rs 2,000 crore (February-end 2003) from a meagre collection of Rs 43 lakh in August 2001.Thegovernment has rolled out the project to other parts ofthe state, including rural areas like the West Godavari district. Customized

services like issuance of certificates and land records, online mandi rates, tele-agriculture, common accounts of SHGs areoffered. www.esevaonline.com; www.westgodavari.org

FRIENDS

9. Fast, Reliable, Instant, Efficient Network for the Disbursement of Services is part of the Kerala State IT Mission. FRIENDScounters handle 1,000 types of payment bills originating out of various PSUs. The payments that citizens can make include utilitypayments for electricity and water, revenue taxes, license fees, motor vehicle taxes, university fees, etc. Firewalls safeguard datafrom manipulation. The application has provisions for adding more modules and for rolling back incorrect entries without affectingthe database even at the user level. One important feature ofFRIENDS is a provision for adding more modules and a queuemanagement system.

GramSampark

10. Gramsampark is a flagship ICT product of the state of Madhya Pradesh. A complete database of available resources,basic amenities, beneficiaries of government programmes and public grievances in all the 51,000 villages of Madhya Pradeshcan be obtained by accessing the website www.mp.nic.in/gramsampark/. Gramsampark has three sections-Gram Paridrashya

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(village scenario), Samasya Nivaran (grievance redress) and Gram Prahari (village sentinel). An eleven-point monitoring systemhas been put in place whereby programmes are monitored village-wise every month. Four more programmes are under themonitoring system, which includes untouchability-eradication, womens empowerment, water conservation and campaigns forsanitation. www.mp.nic.in/gramsampark/

Gyandoot

11. The Gyandoot project was initiated in January 2000 by a committed group of civil servants in consultation with various grampanchayats in the Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh. Gyandoot is a low cost, self-sustainable, and community-owned rural Intranetsystem (Soochnalaya) that caters to the specific needs of village communities in the district. Thirty-five such centres have beenestablished since January 2000 and are managed by rural youth selected and trained from amongst the unemployed educatedyouth of the village. They run the Soochanalayas (organised as Kiosks) as entrepreneurs (Soochaks); user charges are levied fora wide range of services that include agricultural information, market information, health, education, womens issues, andapplications for services delivered by the district administration related to land ownership, affirmative action, and povertyalleviation. Kiosks are connected to the Intranet through dial-up lines, which are soon to be replaced by wireless connectionsusing CorDECT technology. The Soochanalayas have been equipped with Pentium multimedia colour computer along with dotmatrix printers. The user interface is menu based with information presented in the local Hindi language and the features of theGyandoot software are continuously being updated. www.gyandoot.nic.in

Headstart

12. Headstart provides computer-enabled education and basic computer skills for all students in 6000 Jan Shiksha Kendras ofMadhya Pradesh. Madhya Pradesh has 6500 Jan Shiksha Kendras (cluster resource centres) located in Middle Schoolpremises in 48 districts. Headstart will equip every Jan Shiksha Kendra in the state with computer hardware and multimediasoftware. It repositions the JSK as a media unit capable of providing computer-aided education for the children of the middleschool in which the JSK is located and familiarization to computers to all children in primary schools through simple demos andgames to excite their imagination. Among primary schools, EGS school children will come first. For being able to manage this,teachers with a Math or Science background preferably, will be trained across the state through the decentralised trainingcapabilities of the Bhoj Open University. www.bhojvirtualuniversity.com/it/headstart.htm

Lok Mitra

13. The Lok Mitra project was formally dedicated to the people of Hamirpur in Himachal Pradesh as a pilot phase on the 8th ofMay 2001. The services offered include information about vacancies, tenders, market rates, matrimonial services, village e-mail.

An interesting feature is that citizens can use the IT enabled system as a grievance redress system. The LokMitra INTRANET setup in the district Hamirpur consists of two Pentium-III-based Servers (Under WindowsNT), with 4 Pentium-III-based Clientsystems and a Router, set up in a LAN using HUB, in a separate room at the Deputy Commissioner office, Hamirpur, named asLokMitra Soochnalaya. A total of 25 panchayats have been identified for setting up Citizen Information Centres. The project willbe extended to cover all the districts of Himachal Pradesh. www.himachal.nic.in/lokmitra.htm

Mahiti Shakti

14. Launched in 2001, the portal www.mahitishakti.netoperates like a single window through which the citizens can accessinformation related to all aspects of the governments functioning, various benefit schemes and services ranging from obtainingration cards to getting sanction for old age pension. Anyone who wishes to avail the benefit has to go to his/her nearestdesignated STD/ISD kiosk, submit the necessary documents to the Info Kiosk owner and fill in the required form online. Foronline submission of application, the Info Kiosk owner charges Rs. 10 for the application form and Rs 20 for submission. The

taluks of Halol, Kalol, Santrampur, Jambughoda, Ghogamba, Kahmpur, Lunawada, Morwa and Shahera have such info-kiosks.

OLTP

15. Launched in the year 2002, the project connects 16 government departments in Andhra Pradesh on a single network. Allgovernment records and transaction procedure details at the district will be centrally stored and managed on a single Oracle9idatabase. The project seeks to serve the Government department users and citizens in ten villages of Shadnagar mandal, onevillage each in Bijnepally and Jadcherla Mandals, Mahaboobnagar District. Citizens in these pilot locales will be able to conductgovernment department service transactions efficiently through specially designed internet-enabled kiosks. These transactionscan be carried out in English as well as Telugu interfaces. www.ap-it.com

Saukaryam16. Launched in the year 2000, Saukaryam, the pilot project of the Municipal Corporation of Visakhapatnam is now beingimplemented in other parts of the state of Andhra Pradesh as a model e-governance initiative for local governments. Onlinepayment of Municipal dues has been taken up as its first sub-project and other services include, Online Tracking of Building planStatus, Online Filing and Settlement Of Complaints & Grievances, Online Registration of Births and Deaths, Instant Issuance of

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Birth and Death Certificates, Online Tracking of Garbage Lifting. Every service extended by the city corporation is being extendedonline. The Saukaryam model has seen the deployment of ICTs in a context where the Municipal Corporation of Vishakapatnamhad no resources for computerization. www.saukaryam.org

Tambaram Municipality

17. The Tambaram Municipality in its official website www.snegham.comprovides information on birth/death certificates, watercharges through an online database of water charge dues and property tax through an online database of property tax dues. Italso has information on the rainwater harvesting structures in various locations like councilors houses, government offices. Thedynamically updated plan approvals on the website provides citizens with up-to-date status on their plan approvals. The submityour grievance page provides the user with a form wherein they can fill up their grievance and submit it online. The grievance isimmediately recorded into the municipality database and an alert sent to the municipality administration. He site also features acomprehensive data-bank covering a wide variety of information on Tambaram like details of Police Stations, AmbulanceServices, First Aid services, Blood Banks, Electricity Department, Telegraph Offices, Banks, Colleges, Schools, Hospitals,Medical Practitioners, etc. The tenders page provides information on current tenders from the municipality. www.snegham.com

Telemedicine Project (Pune)

18. The Pune district administration in partnership with a global health portal www.doctoranywhere.comand Tata Council forCommunity Initiatives has launched a telemedicine service from government Primary Healthcare Centers for those living ininterior villages. There are currently 88 PHCs in Pune district, each manning five to six sub-centres. The telemedicine project

aims to ultimately connect all the PHCs in the district. Doctors at the PHCs will refer complicated cases to the specialists in majorcities who in turn will give their advice within 24 hours. Ten specialists have been chosen from dermatology, nephrology,neurology, cardiology and gastroenterology. As most PHCs are operational from the premises of district administration runschools and most schools have computers, these could be used to provide the telemedicine service. The TCCI has donated threePentium computers for the pilot project. The district administration will provide computers to the other PHCs. In the first phase,three PHCs in Wagholi, Chakan, and Paud regions would be linked with the district administration and specialists.www.doctoranywhere.com

VOICE

19. The Vijayawada Online Information Centre (VOICE) was launched in June 1998 and implementation was completed inDecember 1999 to deliver municipal services such as building approvals, and birth and death certificates, to the people ofVijayawada. It also handles the collection of property, water and sewerage taxes. The VOICE system uses five kiosks located

close to the citizens. These are linked to the back end processes in the municipal offices through a wide area network. Theapplication has helped reduce corruption, made access to services more convenient, and has improved the finances of the localgovernment. www.ap-it.com

Warana Wired Villages

20. The key objective of the project has been to utilise IT to increase the efficiency and productivity of the existing sugar canecooperative enterprises by setting up of a state-of-the-art computer communications network. This provides agricultural, medical,and educational information in the local language to villages around Warana Nagar in the Kolhapur and Sangli Districts ofMaharashtra. In order to maintain long-term sustainability, 6 months back Warana switched over to the CorDECT technologyfrom the VSAT technology, with 6 or 7 connections already in place. The next 3 months will witness the deployment of thecorDECT WLL in 60 more villages. www.mah.nic.in/warana

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