India to invest Rs 40,000 cr in e-governance

NEW DELHI, INDIA: The government of India has planned an investment of up to Rs 40,000 crore over a period of 4 years to roll out all the planned 1,100 e-governance services by 2014.

"We estimate an investment between Rs 30,000 to Rs 40,000 crore over period of 4 years for rolling out all the planned e-governance services. This investment will cover the cost of all kinds of hardware and software that will be required for capacity building,” said R Chandrashekhar, Secretary, Department of Information Technology, The Government of India, during an interaction with media on the sidelines of Apex Committee on National e-Governance Program (NeGP).

The government has set a target to provide 1,100 citizen and business-centric services to its people by 2014.

As per government records, over 600 such services are already being delivered to citizens. These 600 services include all the services currently being offered by various states and the central government.

DIT secretary mentioned that around Rs 10,000 crore had been already invested till date and rest of the amount planed to launch e-governance services will be spent in a phased manner.

"We don't keep the exact track of overall invested amount but as per a rough estimate, Rs 10,000 crore has been spent so far," said DIT secretary.

The meeting was headed by KM Chandrashekhar, cabinet secretary, Government of India who expressed his satisfaction over the way services under e-governance is being delivered to citizens of the country.

“It is a matter of pride that of the 27 mission mode projects (MMPs) under NeGP, 14 MMPs have already commenced delivery of services. It is expected that rest of the 13 MMPs will start delivering e-services by 2014,” said the cabinet secretary.

MMPs have been divided among state and central government for implementation and delivery of services. The government has planned to deliver the rest of the e-governance services under MMPs in a phased manner. The government has claimed that it will start three services namely unique ID, e-office and e-biz by the end of this year.

Out of this 13 MMPs, 8 services have to be developed and implemented by state government. During the meeting of Apex Committee, state government has been given a target of rolling out e-district and agricultural services by 2011, municipality, policy, land records and employment exchange by 2012 and treasuries and commercial tax services by 2013 in electronic mode.

The last program of Immigration e-services, as per plan, will be delivered by 2014.

The cabinet secretary today assured that his department is making attempt to make cabinet secretariat paperless office by 2011.

During the meet, Apex body has also come up with proposal to form a process re-engineering working group which will come up with recommendations to set-up internal electronic system that will help in reducing procedural delays in approval, implementation and execution of projects.

Elaborating on the status of State Wide Area network , Shankar Aggarwal, joint secretary, DIT, GoI mentioned that state wide connectivity is being provided through State Wide Area Networks (SWANs) ensuring a minimum of 2 Mbps connectivity up to block levels. Aggarwal added that SWANs are operational in 23 States and the remaining will become operational by March 2011.

On status of state data center, Aggarwal assured that all SDC will also be set-up by 2011.

“SDC proposals from 31 States and union territories (UTs) have been approved so far. A total outlay of Rs. 1378.50 Crore and an amount of Rs 124.85 crore as the DIT share and an amount of Rs. 184.16 crore as additional central assistance (ACA) share have been released to the 31 States and UTs. All SDC will be set-up by 2011,” said Aggarwal.

Aggarwal mentioned that the government will also take up the task of converting all manual forms in to electronic forms. 

The government claims that more than 80,000 Common Service Centers (CSCs) have been set up across the country and the number is expected to cross 1,00,000 by March, 2011. The government has planned to have 2,50,000 CSCs in all by 2012 to cover all Panchayats to enable people to access the services  under e-Governance in their vicinity.

However, there were numbers of CSC that were reported to have been closed down because of unviable business model in the absence of government-to-citizen services and reverse bidding by state implementing agencies.

DIT secretary said, “CSCs' performance has been subjected to mid-term evaluation which shows that there are three area of concerns. These are power, connectivity and availability of government services. Despite these hurdles, only 4 per cent of total CSCs have been reported to have been closed due to financial viability concerns. It takes time to build up the government-to-citizen services. For short term, yes there is gap between the number of services available and desirable. But we have looked upon a major developmental program which requires facility of CSC like registration of people under Rural employment guarantee scheme and collection of bio-metrics and other data for digitalization of data for national population register. States have also notified new services which will help in tackling challenges faced by CSCs during this short term.”