E-Gov Begins with the Citizen

A

year ago, I wrote here about the "info-isolation" across India’s

government departments, each struggling with its own databases. Little has

changed.

The US has one common database of social security numbers. This SSN ID does

not change through a citizen’s life–or even after death. Federal departments

such as INS (immigration) and IRS (taxes) all use this number, with restricted

access to the database.

Now consider all the databases across our government departments.

The census bureau has a big one. But its mandate is statistical, and not that

of gathering a citizen’s database for all of government to use. (And the

bureau refuses to allow even restricted access.)

The election commission gathered 600 million voter-ID records a year ago. One

senior ECI official hoped to drive this toward a citizen database a la the US

SSN. A year down, no progress: other departments are still working on their own

databases. From the ECI’s own point of view, its primary mandate is a database

of voters–not a citizen’s database.

The income-tax office has a 20-million database of taxpayers with PAN

(permanent account number) IDs. A senior official says that since anyone–even

a non-taxpayer–can file for a PAN number, this database is an ideal base for a

future citizen database. The customs and excise departments have begun to use

this database, with restricted access. But from the ITO’s official point of

view, the objective is to improve tax collections. This means it will target no

more than 5% of the citizen base: the ITO will not spend on an expensive

all-citizen database, for that is not its mandate. Meanwhile, it struggles to

match "qualifying" lists of phone-owners, foreign travelers, and more,

with inconsistent database formats.

Then there’s the home ministry, planning its own database for the initial

purpose of issuing citizen ID cards in border areas. And food and civil

supplies, which has a huge number of records of ration card holders–mostly on

paper, and mostly obsolete.

Each of them could use a central citizen database, saving many crores of

rupees. None will actually create such a database, because that’s not their

mandate.

So whose mandate is it? Well, the most likely candidate should be a PMO-initiated

task force. This should include senior officials of the ITO, ECI and others,

which draws up the specs, guidelines and milestones, for implementation through

a body with adequate resources and knowledge–such as the NIC.

It would not take much more than the sum of the resources being squandered on

those different citizen databases today.