Rural India to have one-lakh common services centres by 2007

New Delhi, Oct 18: The Department of Information Technology, government of India is targeting to establish one lakh Common Services Centres (CSCs) in rural areas by 2007.

CSC is an information and communication technologies enabled service delivery outlet providing information on various government initiative taken for the improvement of the people of the village.

Speaking at the key note session on the "Indian e-governance perspectives" joint secretary, e-governence, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, government of India R Chandrashekhar said that e-governance has emerged as a necessary and effective tool as the governments across the world are initiating towards ushering an age of accountablity, transparency and accessibility.

He said that implementation the project of this size and scope would pose significant challenges of project management at the national level. He said state governments would also have to play a major role in facilitating the establishment of a large number of CSCs, particularly in the rural areas. " The state governments have to put in place an appropriate institutional mechanism for successful implementation of the scheme," he added.

"Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are being applied through e-governance to streamline the internal government operations and improve the interaction with the common people. E-governance ensures citizens to participate and interact with the governance sphere by the usage of information to make the government more accountable and transparent to the citizens and convenient access to the services provided by the government to the people," Chandrashekhar said.

The session was held at the three-day conference on e-governance 'Conflux 2005' at New Delhi. The conference will conclude tomorrow which is organized jointly by Center for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS), Government of NCT of Delhi and major departments of Government of India.