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DQI Bureau
New Update

Karnataka's e-Procurement Plans

The government of Karnataka has chalked out plans to move all contracts and
procurement across its departments on e-procurement platform in next two years.
The state government has chosen HP to provide a unified online e-procurement
platform. The implementation to be done by HP India will cover contract
management, track the progress of projects and would run on a public private
partnership model.

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The platform would facilitate government procurement activities
like publishing of tenders/RFP, bidding online, empanelment of suppliers and
contractors, contract management and demand aggregation. The project also
involves training for not just the government staff but also contractors and
suppliers in rural and urban areas. To facilitate access to the system, the
government plans to set up cyber cafes at the taluk and sub-taluk levels in a
public-private partnership model.

Bihar
Chalks Out e-Panchayat Plan

The Bihar government has
approved a proposal to introduce e-Governance in all its 8,479 panchayats
at a cost of Rs 252 mn. According to available information, the State
government plans to link eight government departments, including the chief
minister secretariat to the State Wide Area Network (SWAN). The project
aims at establishing direct contact with villagers and making the
functioning of the government more transparent. The project would be
jointly handled by TCS and Bihar State Electronics Development
Corporation, while Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services
(IL&FS) would monitor the implementation.

DQ
Views: The initiative
taken up by the Bihar government is indeed a welcome step. However, it's
strange that the State government has entrusted the job of implementing
the project to Bihar State Electronics Development Corporation (Beltron),
which does not have any expertise in the domain. It may be recalled that
nearly six months back the bureaucracy in the State had attempted to pass
on the implemenation of SWAN to Beltron, in order to bring it out of red.

While the presence of TCS
and IL&FS does assures one that the State would be able to pull though
the project, its important that Bihar realizes that e-Governance has no
scope for compromises and the fact that means are important as the end
result. The State also needs to pull up its socks on the SWAN front, an
area where Jharkhand has moved ahead of even the most IT savvy Indian
states.

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DQ Views: With the whole
country talking e-Procurement, it's surprising that Karnataka took so much
time to jump into the bandwagon. A quick look into the scope of work in the
tender document and one realizes that lot of hard work has been put in by the
state's e-Gov department and NISG in preparing the blue print for the project.
However, what needs to be seen is how this ambitious project shapes up because
HP India, the L1 vendor to bag the implementation deal, has no previous history
of implementing e-procurement projects unlike the other three prime bidders-Wipro,
C1India and the consortium of TCS-SAP. The only deployment that HP has on
showcase is the one deployed in Japan, where HP India had no role to play at
all. Hope the Karnataka government and its PPP partner are able to prove the
detractors wrong.

KMC Adopts e-Governance

Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has decided to move on to the e-Governance
platform in 16 months time. According to reports, the entire e-Governance
platform would be implemented in a phased manner, with the online information
system up and running in a year's time. The e-payment gateway for KMC would,
however, need 16 months to roll out.

KMC has already short-listed BSNL as the network service provider for the
project that would be implemented through a grant-in fund of Rs 200 crore from
the UK government's Department for International Development (DFID). The
entire gamut of civic processes will be available online and though dedicated
kiosks set up for this purpose.

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DQ Views: e-Governance
at municipal level would certainly make a difference and KMC must be
congratulated for taking the first step forward. However, there is a lesson to
be learnt from the various other municipal-level e-Gov projects. KMC should not
address the issue from a service delivery point of view, which is like putting
the horse before the cart. As in any 'good governance' initiative, the KMC
project should attempt to improve the internal processes and automating the
back-end process environment rather than creating kiosks for the purpose. With
the number of Internet subscribers and cyber cafes fast moving north, KMC can
focus more on GPR and leave the kiosks for the second phase. A good idea would
be to rope in cyber cafes, post offices and banks as the service delivery
centers.

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Shubhendu Parth

shubhendup@cybermedia.co.in

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