Electronic Delivery of Services (EDS) Bill, 2011

http://mit.gov.in/content/draft-electronic-delivery-services-bill-2011

1)     Introduction

To speed up the process of delivery of public services to the citizens through electronic mode it is proposed to enact the Electronic Delivery of Services (EDS) Act.

2)     Salient Features of the EDS Bill

a)   The Electronic Delivery of Services Act will mandate provisioning of all public services of all Central and State Government departments compulsorily through electronic means within 5 years from enactment.  

b)   Within 180 days of enactment of the EDS Act, all Departments of Central and State Government will need to identify the list of all public services to be delivered by it through electronic mode.

c)     The Departments will also need to provide details regarding the manner of delivery (how) of these electronic services and their service levels.

d)     It will be ensured that in addition to electronic mode of delivery of services, assisted access to electronic services will also be provided to the citizens.

e)     Departments will create a Grievance Redressal Mechanism for handling complaints regarding non availability of Electronic services or deficiency in delivery of electronic services.

f)    Electronic Service Delivery Commissions will be established at both the Central and State level to oversee the implementation and monitoring of the Act.

g)     The Act provides for penal provisions in case of contravention of the provisions of the EDS Act

3)     Current Status

a)     There has been extensive consultation process over the past 8 months on the EDS Bill, with all Stakeholders including all Central Government Departments, State Governments, Industry, Industry Association, Academia and Civil society.

b)     The EDS Bill was uploaded in the DIT website on 9th February 2011. All subsequent revisions have also been uploaded on the DIT website.

c)     The various suggestions and feedback of the stakeholders have been considered and accordingly the EDS bill has been revised to incorporate these suggestions.

d)     Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India has approved the draft Bill.

e)     It is proposed to introduce the EDS Bill during the winter session of the Parliament

4)     Benefits

The EDS Act Bill will bring about improvement in service delivery and Governance by ensuring legal mandate for delivery of services in electronic mode.

The EDS Bill is hosted at http://mit.gov.in/content/draft-electronic-delivery-services-bill-2011

Scheme for National Rollout of e-District Mission Mode Project

The Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure today approved the following proposals :  Scheme of National Rollout of e-District Mission Mode Project at a cost of Rs 1663.08 crore to be implemented in all 640 districts (including the 41 districts where e-District Pilot Projects have already been initiated) of the country for a period of 4 years.  Approval for an outlay of Rs 1663.08 crore spread over years 2011-2012 to 2014-2015 with an expenditure of Rs 541.22 crore in the Eleventh Five Year Plan and of Rs 1121.86 crore in the 12th Five Year Plan.  Approval of constitution of an Empowered Committee for coordinating the implementation of the Project. Background National e Governance Plan (NeGP) was approved by the Government in May 2006, with the following vision: "Make all Government Services accessible to the common man in his locality, through common service delivery outlets and ensure efficiency, transparency and reliability of such services at affordable costs to realize the basic needs of the common man". To realize this vision, 27 Central, State and Integrated Mission Mode projects (MMPs) along with 8 support components were identified and approved under NeGP. States have the flexibility to identify upto 5 additional state-specific projects, which are particularly relevant for the economic development of the State. NeGP also envisages creation of the core IT infrastructure in the form of State Wide Area Networks (SWANs), State Data Centres (SDCs) State Service Delivery Gateways (SSDGs) and one lakh Front Ends namely Common Services Centres (CSCs), in rural areas across the country to deliver public services electronically. e-District is one of the 27 MMPs under NeGP, with the Department of Information Technology (DIT), Government of India as the nodal Department, to be implemented by State Government or their designated agencies. The MMP aims at electronic delivery of identified high volume citizen centric services, at such district and sub-district level, which are not part of any other MMP. The estimated total project cost for the nation-wide rollout of e-District MMP is Rs 1663.08 crore, out of which Government of India's share is estimated to be Rs 1233.08 crore and States' share Rs 430 crore. Citizens will be able to access Government to Citizen (G2C) services close to their houses through Common Service Centers (CSCs) in an integrated manner. Service delivery of G2C services will be responsive, transparent and accountable at Districts and Sub-District offices. Citizens will have to travel less distance, make less trips to Government offices and also will have to wait for much less time to get these services delivered to them. Citizen will also be able to track on line the progress of the application/request. Offices and Sub-Offices of district administration will get modernized and Government processes automated which will ultimately empower the citizens. ***** SB/SKS (Release ID :71720)

Shri MN Vidyashankar Principal Secretary e-Governance, Karnataka

Mr MN Vidyashankar Chief Election Officer Karnataka , meeting representatives of Praja, a citizens organisation of Bangalore

The above photo downloaded from the internet represents the way of working of Mr Vidyashankar whch is of being extremely accessible  to both citizens and private sector, understanding their point of view and incorporating their suggestions after due evaluation.

In the past decade, Mr Vidyashankar has served the State Government of Karnataka in some important positions namely Chairman BWSSB, Commissioner BDA, Secretary Medical Education, , Principal Secretary IT BT & ST , Chief Electoral Officer and Principal Secretary e-Governance. In all these positions besides running the regular routine operations of the departments with a high degree of efficiency, he has kept the citizens interests paramount and introduced numerous IT based innovations.

Urban Property Ownership Records Project of Government of Karnataka

Urban Property Records Project of Government of Karnataka

View more presentations from Anirban Mukerji.

United Nations releases 2010 e-Governance Survey; India ranked at 119th in the World

The United Nations has released its 2010 e-Governance survey which can be accessed at the following link.  UN e-Governance page

As per the survey, " most portals and websites have remained stagnant since 2008 Survey in terms of developing new features. As a result, the region as a whole has regressed in the 2010 survey and remains far below the world average".


India has scored 0.3567 in the E-Government development index value which is below 0.3814 scored in 2008. India's rank in the World e-Government development ranking is 119 falling from 113 in 2008. In the "South Asia" grouping India is 4th below Maldives, Iran and Sri Lanka.

Korea has scored the first ranking in the World e-Government development ranking with a E-Government development index of 0.8785. The Survey states that the "National portal received the highest ranking and scored particularly high in providing services and tools for citizen engagement"

Urban Property Ownership Records Project

UPOR Project Summary

Government Process Re-engineering

The presentation on Government Process Re-engineering ( GPR) introduces the subject of GPR , its relationship with IT automation and a need to implement GPR in a thoughful manner

Government Process Re-engineering

View more presentations from Anirban Mukerji.

National e-Governance Plan of Government of India

The enclosed presentation is a brief overview of the National e-Governance Plan. The presentation has been created based on the numerous presentation delivered by Shri R Chandrasekhar IAS, Secretary DIT Govt of India and Shri Shankar Aggarwal IAS Joint Secretary DIT Govt of India

NEGP Presentation -  

another host for the document

Guidelines for preparation of RFP's for e-Governance Projects

The presentation below gives a few guidelines that may be followed for preparation of RFP's for e-Governance projects

Guidelines for preparation of a RFP for e governance projects

View more presentations from Anirban Mukerji.

Overview of the Government of India Common Service Centre Project

In 2007 I had prepared a note that gives a brief overview of the CSC project and the role for IT product companies in this project. Interested readers can access the document here  CSC Note 

Response to some basic questions on e-Governance

Recently Sivakumar CEO of ITC IBD was asked to participate in a roundtable organized by the economist group on e-Governance. The innovative tech user that he is, he asked his group to respond to three questions on both twitter and facebook. Below are my responses to his questions

E-Governance initiatives of Karnataka

Yojana, a magazine published by the Publications division of India , invited Shri Rajeev Chawla to contribute a note on e-Governance projects in Karnataka. Jointly with Shri Chawla, the following note was prepared.

The note describes the various e-Governance projects in Karnataka like Bhoomi, Bangalore One, Nemmadi and a few other departmental initiatives like Khajane ( the treasury computerisation project), Kaveri ( Computerisation of the registration department)

The link to the document is below

E-Governance initiatives of Karnataka

Learnings from Bhoomi

Best Practices from Implementation of the Bhoomi[1] Program of Karnataka

Author - Anirban Mukerji[2] anirmukerji@yahoo.com

1. Abstract

Under the Bhoomi program of Karnataka Government, about 20 Million farm land records in the State were computerized leading to transparency in rural land record management. The Bhoomi program, implemented in 2002 , was among the pioneering e-Governance programs of the Country. The difficulty in implementation of Bhoomi can be perceived from the fact that even now in 2010 only Gujarat and Tamil Nadu have achieved end to end computerized delivery of farm land records. The Bhoomi program has been recognized both nationally and internationally by agencies like UN and World Bank and is lauded as a land mark e-Governance program. The many reasons for the successful implementation of Bhoomi namely proper design of the program, abolition of manual alternatives, stakeholder management, capacity building among government servants etc. are written in this article. [i]