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Features

UTTAR PRADESH On the Rise

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DQI Bureau
New Update

Guided by the adage of Sarvjan Hitay Evam Sarvjan Sukhay, Uttar Pradesh, a
land known for its tehzeeb and nafasat has, over a period of two years,
rolled out several e-governance initiatives. As is clear from the e-governance
vision of Uttar Pradesh, the state has been using information and communication
technology for empowering the masses through easier access to information,
transforming government processes for better service delivery, and as a vehicle
for economic development of the state.

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The e-governance projects are making the lives of citizens easier by taking
government services to the citizens doorsteps, says DS Srivastava, special
secretary IT, department of IT & electronics, Uttar Pradesh. The UP government
is effectively using IT to make the administration quick, responsive,
transparent, hassle-free, and accessible, while at the same time saving on
costs.

The government has rolled out several e-governance initiatives like SWAN,
e-district, and citizen service centers for its citizens, and others like state
data centers and e-procurement for bringing in transparency in government
processes and increasing the reach of services through IT-based delivery
channels.

SWAN to Fly

Part of the national e-governance plan (NeGP), state wide area networks
(SWAN) will be rolled out across the state with the assistance of Uttar Pradesh
Social Welfare Nirman Nigam, that has been appointed for undertaking
construction of points of presence (POP) at the district and tehsil levels.
Bandwidth connectivity will be provided by BSNL, while TCIL has been appointed
by the state government as the technical consultant.

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Funded by the Government of India, the total outlay expenditure for the
scheme is Rs 168.72 crore of which Rs 29.65 crore has already been allocated to
the center for e-governance, and Rs 90 crore to NIXI. For the construction of
POPs at the district, tehsil, and block levels a total of Rs 12.44 crore has
been allocated to Social Welfare Nirman Nigam. For construction of POP at the
state level at Yojana Bhavan, NIC has been given Rs 19.75 lakh. For setting up
bandwidth till the block level and laying of circuit, BSNL was allocated Rs
269.16 lakh. Currently 466 out of the proposed 885 are already operational
throughout the state.

However, not alls been well with the scheme as SWAN was originally intended
to be operational from January 2008.There was a delay from the Social Welfare
Nirman Nigam in transferring POPs to NIC. Following which a meeting was chaired
by the industrial development commissioner in which it was decided to
re-schedule the deadline.

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Another hurdle in SWAN rollout was the dispute over the amount of
disbursement. Even as the Nirman Nigam had already been allocated 60% of the
budget amount as advance payment, the remaining was to be disbursed on the
completion of the project.

CSC Roadmap

The citizen service centers (CSCs) are to be established under the
public-private partnership (PPP) model for providing government and private
services all under one roof. During FY 09, a total of 17,909 CSCs will be
set-up. The center for e-governance has been chosen for providing support,
content, and required policies to service center agencies (SCA). The state has
been divided into seven zones and for each zone an SCA has been selected through
an open tender process.

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A master service agreement has been signed with the selected service center
agencies, and as per the agreement, 25% of the centers are expected to be set-up
by September; 25% by November this year; another 25% by January 2009; and the
remaining by April 2009.

The project however is not without its share of impediments. It was proposed
that at these centers, citizens would be provided G2C services by paying a
nominal fee. However, for providing the G2C services, backend computerization
till the department level is a must, but, shockingly, the CSC scheme has no such
provision. The state government has written to the Planning Commission for
permission to use the remaining Rs 250 crore for backend computerization, for
which permission is awaited.

On an average of four years, a minimum normative value on the basis of
capital expenditure per CSC has been decided. The government assistance sum has
been fixed on the basis of normative value per CSC of Rs 3,304, and for the
entire state a sum of Rs 284 crore has been allocated for a period of 48 months.

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First Timers
Some interesting projects that are unique in their concept, and are
benefitting citizens immensely
  • Tehsil Diwas: Another interesting project being implemented in the
    state is tehsil diwas computerization. Tehsil diwas is basically a day in
    a month wherein villagers would gather at the tehsil office and submit
    petitions to the nayab tehsildar pertaining to land disputes, irrigation
    issues, etc. Usually the tehsil diwas would see applicants making endless
    rounds for tracking their application status.

The government therefore came upon this unique concept of tehsil diwas
computerization. While cynics may continue to argue the viability of such
projects considering that computer literacy is not prevalent in villages,
post the CSC rollout, villagers can easily track their applications status
online at these centers with the assistance of the center in-charge.

The applications would be divided into nine categories: revenue, police
department, panchayati raj, power, education, social welfare, health and
medical, food and supplies, public works, irrigation, etc, and will be
computerized by the nayab tehsildar.

Every applicant will be allotted a unique nine-digit number that can be
used for all future correspondence, and the applicant can see the complaint
status report and action taken thereof.

The private operator meanwhile has to upload the complaints within 24
hours of submission on the Web and would also be responsible for uploading
the action taken on the complaint. The data entry work has been outsourced
and therefore the chosen vendor has to arrange for computer, generator,
Internet connectivity, photo copier machine, printer, etc, all at his own
expense. A nodal officer has been appointed at the district level for
overseeing the work.

  • e-Suvidha: Based on the PPP model, e-Suvidha enables citizens to pay
    their bills for various services all at a single window. Started as a
    pilot project in 2006, thirty-one services are being offered through these
    centers (excluding railway reservation as this service would only be
    offered through five centers).

The objective of e-Suvidha was to bring in all G2C, G2B, and B2C services
under the e-Suvidha realm so that citizens and traders do not have to make
endless rounds of government offices and run from pillar to post for getting
a simple job done.

e-Districts: Seamless Services

Districts are the de facto front-end of governments where most G2C
interaction and bulk of citizen centric services are delivered. As such, it was
felt to improve this experience and enhance efficiencies of the various
departments at the district level to enable seamless service delivery to
citizens. The purpose of the project is to integrate various departments of the
districts for providing seamless services to citizens.

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As a first step for successful implementation of the e-District project, the
re-designing of the existing processes and delivery mechanisms has been
identified as a key activity, says Srivastava.

The objectives of e-District include backend computerization to enable
efficient delivery of government services, besides proactively provide a system
of spreading information on government schemes, planned developmental
activities, and status of current activities. The front-ends under the scheme
are only to be built at district, tehsil, sub-division, and block level, in the
form of citizen facilitation counters. Village level linkage would be
established through CSCs for delivery of services.

The key difference between the e-District and CSC scheme is that while in an
e-District, backend computerization is a pre-requisite; in CSCs it is not. Part
of the NeGP under the Mission Mode Project, the e-District project has been
fully funded by the central government and is being rolled out in six districts,
namely Gorakhpur, Noida, Ghaziabad, Sultanpur, Sitapur, and Rai Barelli. A total
of ten services and thirty-two sub-services will be made available. The pilot
project is expected to be rolled out by October 2008.

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SDC: A Safe Repository

Under the NeGP, as part of the core infrastructure, a state data center has
been proposed in Lucknow for storage of data and applications of various state
departments. This data center will be further linked to the common service
center through SWAN from where e-governance services will be provided to
citizens. In short, this data center will serve as a data repository for the
state departments, says Arvind Sonkar, managing director, UPDESCO. While Wipro
has been appointed as the consultant by the central government, UPDESCO has been
anointed as the nodal agency by the state.

e-District: Project Status
PWC, Wipro, and 3i Infotech have been appointed as consultants for two
districts each of the six districts, and NIC is the implementation partner
responsible for developing software for front-end and backend. At the
district level, data digitization training is underway under the supervision
of the district magistrates while at the state level, a high level committee
chaired by the head of revenue department will supervise the work being
done.

For rolling out the e-District project in the six districts, Rs 4
crore is to be paid to each; Out of this total plan outlay of Rs 24 crore,
an amount of Rs 5.86 crore has already been transferred to the state
government by NIXI, and Rs 4.75 crore has been spent on setting up the CSCs,
software development, and data digitization.

The scheme is to be rolled out in two phases. The first phase was
expected to be rolled out in 18 months in all the six districts but would
now be implemented by October 2008. In the second phase, after the
successful completion of the pilot project, the project would subsequently
be rolled out in the whole state over the next two years.

The following deliverables have already been presented: district-wise
reports along with a BPR report including GAP analysis and a project plan;
change management training is expected to begin soon, and selection of
vendors for data digitization is already in progress; and, most importantly,
a public information center has been set up in the six selected districts at
a cost of Rs 42 lakh per center. Uttar Pradesh NIC is involved with the
application development work with assistance from consultants, and the work
is already in the testing phase.

Here too the project is facing resistance from several key departments:
social welfare, panchayati raj, small industries, home affairs, and
administrative reforms departments have still not released orders, leading
to delay in the rollout. A tussle between the state and central government
over money disbursement for backend computerization also is one of the
contributing factors for project delay.

For the e-District project, the total expenditure outlay is estimated at
Rs 24 crore out of which Rs 5.86 crore has already been released by the
central governments IT department. Of the release amount, Rs 4.75 crore has
been spent on various works while Rs 15 crore is urgently needed for
hardware purchase, conducting change management training, and digitization
work which has yet not been sanctioned.

Giving an update of the project status, Sonkar says that the ground floor of
the UPDESCO office has been found suitable for setting up the data center by
Wipro and a site plan for construction of the data center has been principally
agreed upon. Wipro, being the consultant, prepared a project report as per the
requirements of the state government, which was presented to the central
government after an approval from the UP government.

The central government has agreed to spend Rs 55.33 crore for state data
centers of which Rs 4.20 crore has already been forwarded as advance to UPDESCO
and has been deposited in the account of the center for e-governance.

e-Procurement: Bringing Transparency

Part of the NeGP Mission Mode Project, the e-Procurement project was
launched in December 2007 after which orders were passed in January 2008 for
introducing it in six departments: irrigation and public works department;
health and medical; commissioner industries; World Bank, and externally aided
projects; printing and stationery; IT and electronics department. The
implementation of the scheme is on the platform developed by NIC and is already
in use in states like Tamil Nadu, Haryana, and Orissa.

NIC, apart from being responsible for maintaining the UP e-procurement
portal, is also responsible for providing digital signatures for department
officials. UP Electronics Corporation has been designated as the nodal agency
for coordinating with key departments and NIC. UPLC will also provide hands-on
training and mock tender submission.

Under the chairmanship of principal secretary/special secretary, an
e-monitoring cell has been formed which will ascertain the progress of the
project. The monitoring committee had directed the Lok Nirman Vibhag and the
printing and stationery department to publish their first tender through the
e-tender portal in January 2009.

Through the e-tendering process, bidders can view details of tenders, submit
bids online, and even track the status of their tenders. The vendors also have
to get digital signatures from any of theseMTNL, TCS, GNFC, safescrypt, IDRBT,
and customs and central excise.

Single-window Services

Since citizen friendly services are being offered at low costs and all at a
single window, this leads to transparency in services and faster services. A
single-window concept also leads to saving time and effort for citizens who
earlier had to run from pillar to post for getting bills deposited. Moreover,
the amount spent on bill generation also gets reduced. The related database is
uploaded on a real time basis, and the payment procedure too has been made
online. Departmental data is online and on this basis an MIS report is
generated. Government employees who earlier had to spend a significant amount of
time on essential work like revenue collection, maintaining accounts, releasing
certificates have been freed of doing the same and can now concentrate more on
their core work leading to increase in employee productivity.

Stuti Das

stutid@cybermedia.co.in

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