Brief outline of National e-Governance Plan

The document provides a brief outline of the National e-Governance Plan

1      NeGP Objective

1)    Laying  the foundation and provide the impetus for long-term growth of e-Governance  within  the  country

2)    Creating the  right  governance  and institutional mechanisms

3)    Setting up  the  core  infrastructure  and  policies

4)    Implementation of   a number  of Mission Mode  Projects  at  the  center,  state  and  integrated  service  levels  to

5)    Creation of a citizen-centric and business-centric environment for governance.

2      National E-Governance Strategy

1)    Centralized Initiative, Decentralized Implementation 

2)    Identify services to be targeted Prioritize Services, Identify measurable service goals

3)    Identify, appoint & empower Mission Leaders for various e-Governance Projects

4)    Create mechanism for effective Private Sector participation 

5)    Put in place a common Infrastructure, Policies, Standards and Framework. 

6)    All  services  supported by 3  infrastructure pillars  to  facilitate web-enabled Anytime, Anywhere access 

a)    Connectivity: State Wide Area Networks (SWANs)/NICNET 

b)    National Data Bank/ State Data Centres ( SDCs) 

c)    Common Service Centres (CSCs) primary mode of delivery 

3      List of Mission Mode Projects

3.1    Federal Initiatives

Initiatives in departments like Income Tax, Central Excise, Passports/Visa & Immigration, Department of Company affairs, about 9 in number

3.2    State

Initiatives that are in the domain of the administration of the State Governments like Land Records, Commercial Taxes, Treasury Departments, Police Municipalities, Land and deed Registration, Citizen Services about 11 in number

3.3    Integrated e-Governance projects

These would be projects like e-Business facilitating Government to Business exchange, Electronic Data Interchange, India Portal, National E-Governance  Gateway

3.4    Common Infrastructure

The Common Infrastructure to facilitate delivery of the above mentioned e-Governance projects would comprise of

1)    Common Service Centers

2)    State Wide Area Networks

3)    State Data Centres

4      Role of Department of Information Technology

1)    Program Structure for Common Infrastructure Projects like Common Service Centre, State Data Centre and State Wide Area Network comprising of

a)    Funding for Projects

b)    Program Design comprising of appointment of Consultants for preparation of centralized preparation of Tender ( Request for Proposal ) Documents

2)    Human Resource Development and Training

3)    Evangelizing e-Governance in both Federal Ministries and State Governments

4)    Assessment of e-Governance projects already implemented

5      Infrastructure Pillars of NeGP

5.1    Common Service Centres ( CSC)

1)    Objective to create 100,000 centres in mostly rural areas of the country

2)    These CSC’s will mainly comprise of 1-2 computers, peripherals like printers, cameras , and will have the best available internet connectivity.

3)    The CSC will be operated by a entrepreneur who would have knowledge of operating computer and will facilitate the villagers in accessing

a)    Government to Citizen services like Birth and Death Certificates, identity documents

b)    Services offered by Private Sector Service providers like Insurance , Loans, digital photography

4)    The CSC scheme has been implemented on a Public Private Partnership mode where a private company has taken the responsibility of establishing CSC’s in a part of a State.

5)    The role of the Government ( DIT) has been in part funding of the money for the recurring expenditure

6)    Original project cost estimated at $ 1.1. Bn with contribution from government at $ 330 Mn (30%) and private sector at $ 770 Mn (70%). Post establishment of the scheme the current situation is that Government’s contribute is only $ 100 Mn (5%) and the contribution of the private sector is $ 1.9  Bn (95%)

5.2    State Wide Area Network

1)    The SWAN will provide 2 Mbps Connectivity upto the Sub district level ( one administrative level below county). It will provide  Data, Voice and Video Connectivity services to more than 100,000 Government offices

2)    Overall project outlay US $ 750 Mn

3)    Service based implementation and operational framework

a)    Framerwork for IIIrd party audit of implementation

b)    Strict Service Level Agreements with Contractors executing the SWAN

4)    Except for 2-3 states the task of establishment of SWAN’s in most states has been completed and work awarded to private contracters.

5)    Vendors like Tulip, Spanco and UTL have bagged a large proportion of the contracts in most states. TCS has also won SWAN contracts in 3 states.

6)    SWAN’s in many states like Gujarat, Tamil nadu already established, Implementation in progress in many states like Karnataka, Haryana, Punjab

5.3    State Data Centre

1)    Objectives

a)    To  create  a shared secure  resource  for  consolidation  of    Data,  Services, Applications & Infrastructure at  the State/UT  level to enable electronic delivery of  core intra government , government to citizens and government to business services.

b)    Ensure better Operations, Standardization of Systems & management control 

c)    Aggregation of  IT  Infrastructure  (Hardware, Storage, Networking and Software) and  Management  Resources  leading  to  reduced  costs  of  creating  common Infrastructure

2)    Funding available for establishment of Data Centres around US $ 250 Mn

3)    The project will be awarded through a transparent bidding mechanism, In most states, a composite evaluation of technical and commercial bids submitted by bidders

4)    The Vendor will have set up the Data Centre and also manage it for a period of 5 years

5)    Bidding completed in only one state – Andhra Pradesh, Tenders released in some states like Kerala, Haryana

6      Other successful e-Governance projects under NeGP

6.1    MCA 21

1)    The first Mission Mode Project to be executed in the country

2)    The Project has been executed by TCS.

3)    MCA21 is envisioned  to provide anytime and anywhere services to  businesses  by Ministry  of Company Affairs. The  project  covers  all  major  transactions like Registration and incorporation of new companies;  Filing  of  annual  returns/balance  sheets/forms 

4)    The  Technical infrastructure for the project comprises of A portal  enables  electronic  filing  of  documents and a data Centre  that serves  as  a  secure  electronic  registry  for  storage  and  retrieval  of  records

5)    The MCA21  covers  a  network  of  25 MCA  offices  across  the  country and services more  than 800 thousand registered companies.

6)    To enable success of the project, the companies act has been modified and filing of all documents  electronically on the MCA 21 portal has been made mandatory

7)    As of July 20, 2007, the portal registered an average of 17 lakh hits per day. The e-filings till  then  have totaled  over 2.4 Mn.  In all, 84,000 companies have been registered online.

6.2    E-Passport

1)    A project of similar complexity as MCA 21

2)    The project involves an expenditure of US $ 275 Mn , It has been bagged by TCS. The Project is under implementation.

3)    The Passport Seva Project is intended to transform the delivery of all passport-related services across the country, with emphasis on process efficiency, citizen focus, employee productivity and system transparency.

4)    The Project objectives are

a)    Issue passports (fresh, re-issue, duplicate) in 3 working days and other  miscellaneous passport services on the same day

b)    Deliver services in a citizen friendly manner  through multiple ways

c)    To enable the above many processes and bottlenecks like the procedure of police verification have been re-engineered