The Berlin wall crumbled to make Germany one. The Srinagar-Muzzafarabad bus service has brought together either sides of the LoC. The world is going in just the direction where walls are collapsing, allowing all to mingle freely. Similarly, all Indian government departments will, one day, share data and process knowledge freely, across terrain, beyond all barriers of language and infrastructure. Sounds perfect, but: How do we get there?

The bottleneck
Why shouldn't government agencies talk to each other? For example, take income from the same data pool of the Census, saving the government agencies and citizens a lot of effort and, more significantly, have data that is consistent and accurate. It is not just sharing the database. Sharing project intelligence is another key area where these departments lack synergy. "Though two domains may have different policies, problems faced by both are more or less the same. Though applications might differ, the learning should be shared," says Dr DC Misra, president, Indian Society of E-Governance. According to Gurumurthy Kasinathan, director of IT for Change, "Like corporates used to be, governments are still structured around government activity. So we have different departments for different areas, like agriculture, education, health etc across various geographic levels-state, division, block etc." In the past decades multi-business corporates, he says, have realized that this alienates the customer and, hence, have created a layer that actually talks to each customer segment, hiding internally the complexity of multiple products offered. "Governments are still to get into such process and structure changes."

Tanmoy Chakrabarty, VP and head, Global Government Industry Group of TCS says, "Many factors contribute to the state of affairs: a huge mindset barrier in keeping with the organizational structure, fear of losing power over the departments knowledge, and the inherent inertia in the government departments."

Overcoming the barriers
Attention in the government technology arena is now gradually shifting to developing plans or business cases, essentially to understand the bigger picture before making any investments or implementations. National eGovernance Action Plan (NEGAP) has been an attempt to leave behind the big money failures and stand-alone systems, that officials are now working to overcome. According to Ashis Sanyal, director of DIT: "NEGAP will provide the necessary synergy to all departments. While we cannot expect to reach the levels of USA online and UK online because e-governance in our country is in the nascent stages, we have clear measurable service delivery goals which will be achieved through the Mission Mode Projects."

According to Tanmoy, TCS, "NEGAP is a positive step, but differences do lie in planning and actual deployment. As projects are further broken down to sub-projects for implementation, the holistic picture may be lost sight of." Information and other resources need to be actively shared at all levels. Therefore, the roles of DIT, NISG and NIC cannot be underestimated.

Indeed, there are a few shining examples. The Ministry of Surface Transport (MOST) is working on the projects SARTHI (driving license) and VAHAN (vehicle registration), being developed by NIC. Another project is the Tax Information Exchange System from the Ministry of Finance, which is being developed by 3i Infotech. It facilitates the setting up of a centralized exchange of all interstate dealers in post-VAT scenario. The estimated cost of the project is Rs 30 crore.

According to Prakash Kumar, secretary, Dept of Information Technology and Administrative reforms, Govt Of Delhi: "The states can easily share software if they have the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) with them. The Tender Notice Information system (TNIS) developed by the DIT, Govt. of Delhi, has been adopted by the Department of Post and the state governments of Kerala, Nagaland, Uttaranchal, Meghalaya, Orissa, and Goa."

MNIC-a lingering hope
Government departments can save a lot by sharing software as well as multipurpose database. In view of the latter, the Multi-Purpose National Identity Card Project (MNIC) aims at preparing a population register, a national register of Indian citizens to provide a unique identity number to each citizen and also a multi-purpose residency card to non-citizens. The MNIC would function as a necessary instrument of e-governance, a user-friendly interface between the citizen and the government and a deterrent for future illegal immigration.

The Building Blocks of Synergy Ashis Sanyal Director, DIT Gurumurthy Kasinathan, Director, IT for Change Prakash Kumar, secretary, Dept of Information Technology and Administrative reforms, Govt of Delhi "NEGAP will provide the necessary synergy to all departments” "We have different departments for different areas like agriculture, education, health etc across geographic levels” "The states can easily share software if they have the Intellectual Property Rights with them”

TCS, which was commissioned to carry out a feasibility study regarding the project in the year 2000, gave its go ahead to the project in 2001. The pilot was initiated in April 2003 and was supposed to be completed by December 2003. When contacted, RG Mitra, deputy registrar general (census and tabulations) told Dataquest that the pilot was still going on and was only expected to be completed by the end of 2005.

MNIC, still in its pilot stage, has evoked strong emotions from both supporters and cynics. The project raises important questions concerning privacy and rights of an individual, weighed against the safety of state and society. The smart ID card with two-dimensional bar coding would contain personal details and a biometric measurement. These cards were to be used for the purpose of issuing passports, driving licenses, ration cards, health care, education and employment, insurance, and maintenance of land records, among other facilities. The pilot project has been taken up in a few selected border districts of 13 states.

According to Prakash Kumar, "The cost of the cards will ultimately be borne by the citizen; therefore, the paramount need is to develop a strategy that will be cost and effort effective, keeping redundancy at its ebb. Moreover, the country has to put in place the required infrastructure even in remotest and inaccessible places before MNIC tries to emulate the Social Security Number project of USA."

Not there yet, but the destination has been identified. Now it's all about planning, getting all the departments and states involved-and identifying a common thread.

Jasmine Kaur, New Delhi

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