The government in India has been continuously endeavoring to provide citizen services in a better manner. There have been several successful initiatives and many noteworthy projects have been undertaken in various states of India. Some of the successful initiatives are:

The first such project to gain prominence is Gyandoot in the state of Madhya Pradesh. Gyandoot, arguably, has more services under its ambit than other projects. Gyandoot is an intranet connecting rural cyber cafes catering to the needs of citizens.

The success of the Gyandoot project is due to: Single window facility for the citizens to avail the information, Empowerment of citizens, a model for public – private partnership in providing the e-governance service to the citizens and for facilitating entrepreneurship among the rural mass through ownership of the information kiosks.

To develop the area in a well-planned manner, SUDA was formed in Jan, 1978 under Gujarat Town Planning and Urban Development act - 1976, which covers SMC and 722 km area of 148 villages surrounding SMC. To provide the public amenities like water supply and underground drainage to the areas under SUDA jurisdiction, SUDA has assigned the experts a task to prepare report on such works.

e- Sewa is the first major initiative in the country to employ information technology as a tool to improve services for citizens.  The Andhra Pradesh government launched the e-sewa programme to provide integrated services to citizens of the state. The e-sewa center is a onestop-shop for more than 30 government-to-consumer (G2C) and business-to-consumer (B2C) services. From payment of electricity, water and telephone bills to the issue of birth and death certificates, permits and licenses, reservation of bus tickets and receipt of passport applications, the e-sewa centers offer a wide range of services under one roof.

SETU (meaning “Bridge” in local language) or the Citizen Facilitation Centre has been set up by government of Maharashtra in the city of Aurangabad (population 1 million approx) as a onestop service centre for citizens who have to visit government offices for certificates, permits, authentication, affidavits and other services. The Centre attempts, through the use of ICT, to reduce the visit of citizens from one office to another and prevent the functioning of touts while providing greater transparency, accessibility and efficiency to the procedures in decision making.

In the state of Kerala in South India, FRIENDS (Fast, Reliable, Instant, Efficient Network for Disbursement of Services) centers provide a one-stop, front-end, IT-enabled payment counter facility for the government payments to be made by citizens.

National e-Governance Plan (NeGP)

To bring the benefits of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) at the last mile to ensure transparent, timely and hassle free delivery of citizen services, Government of India has initiated e-Governance programme in country in the late 1990s.

 After that, Union Government has approved the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), comprising of 27 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) and 8 components on May 18, 2006 to give a boost to e-Governance initiatives in India.

Department of Information Technology (DIT) and Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DAR&PG) has formulated the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP).

Vision of National e-Governance Plan

National e-Governance Plan has been launched with the aim of improving delivery of Government services to citizens and businesses is guided by the following vision:

“Make all Public Services accessible to the common man in his locality, through common service delivery outlets and ensure efficiency, transparency and reliability of such services at affordable costs to realize the basic needs of the common man.”

The vision statement clearly underlines these priorities of the Government in fostering good governance:

Accessibility:  National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) has a provision for State Wide Area Network (SWAN) to connect all the government offices up to the block level and Common Service Centres (CSCs) for accessing the citizens from the rural areas.

Common Service Delivery Outlets:  one computer and internet enabled Common Service Centre (CSC) is envisaged to set up for every six villages so that Villagers can easily avail these services. These Common Service Centres (CSCs) are envisaged to offer online Integrated Service Delivery on ‘Anytime, Anywhere’ basis.

Adopting e-Governance for improving the Governance: The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) will enable government to reach citizens thereby improving governance. This will also enable improvement in monitoring and implementing of various government schemes thereby increasing the accountability and transparency in government.

Improve the quality of life of citizens: e-Governance would help in attaining this objective through the provision of citizen centric service delivery at nominal cost, and thereby providing better turnaround times and convenience in demanding and availing services.

Hence, the vision is to use e-Governance as the route for governments to strengthen good governance. All services provided through the various e-Governance initiatives are expected to assist the governments at the Central and State levels in reaching the yet ‘unreached’ and enable involvement and empowerment of marginalized groups through their participation in the government processes thereby contributing towards poverty reduction and bridging the sharp social and economic divide.

Digital India

In order to transform the entire ecosystem of public services through the use of information technology, the Government of India has unveiled an ambitious Digital India programme with the vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. This programme has nine pillars :

1. Broadband Highways

• This covers three sub components, namely Broadband for All Rural, Broadband for All Urban and National Information Infrastructure.
• Under Broadband for All Rural, 250000 village Panchayats would be covered by December’ 2016.
• Under Broadband for All Urban, Virtual Network Operators would be leveraged for service delivery and communication infrastructure in new urban development and buildings would be mandated.
• National Information Infrastructure would integrate the networks like SWAN, NKN and NOFN along with cloud enabled National and State Data Centres.

2. Universal Access To Mobile Connectivity.

• The initiative is to focus on network penetration and fill the gaps in connectivity in the country.
• All together 42,300 uncovered villages will be covered for providing universal mobile connectivity in the country.

3. Public Internet Access Programme

• The two sub components of Public Internet Access Programme are Common Service Centres and Post Offices as multi-service centres.
• Common Service Centres would be strengthened and its number would be increased from approximately 135,000 operational at present to 250,000 i.e. one CSC in each Gram Panchayat. CSCs would be made viable, multi-functional end-points for delivery of government and business services. DeitY would be the nodal department to implement the scheme.
• A total of 150,000 Post Offices are proposed to be converted into multi service centres. Department of Posts would be the nodal department to implement this scheme.

4. E-Governance – Reforming Government Through Technology

• The guiding principles for reforming government through technology are- Form simplification and field reduction; Online applications and tracking of their status ; Mandatory use of online repositories e.g. school certificates, voter ID cards, etc.
• Electronic Databases – all databases and information should be electronic and not manual.
• Workflow Automation Inside Government – The workflow inside government agencies should be automated to enable efficient government processes and to allow visibility of these processes to the citizens.
• Public Grievance Redressal - IT should be used to automate, respond and analyze data to identify and resolve persistent problems. These would be largely process improvements.

5. E-Kranti (Negp 2.0) – Electronic Delivery Of Services

• There are 31 Mission Mode Projects under different stages of e-governance project lifecycle. Further, 10 new MMPs have been added to e-Kranti by the Apex Committee on NeGP.
• Technology for Education – e-Education: Free wifi will be provided in all secondary and higher secondary schools (totalling around 250,000 schools). A programme on digital literacy would be taken up at the national level. MOOCs –Massive Online Open Courses shall be leveraged for eEducation.
• Technology for Health – e-Healthcare: E-Healthcare would cover online medical consultation, online medical records, online medicine supply, pan-India exchange for patient information.
• Technology for Farmers: This would facilitate farmers to get real time price information, online ordering of inputs and online cash, loan and relief payment with mobile banking.
• Technology for Security: Mobile based emergency services and disaster related services would be provided to citizens on real time basis so as to take precautionary measures well in time.
• Technology for Financial Inclusion: Financial Inclusion shall be strengthened using Mobile Banking, Micro-ATM program and CSCs/ Post Offices.
• Technology for Justice: Interoperable Criminal Justice System shall be strengthened by leveraging eCourts, e-Police, e-Jails and e-Prosecution.
• Technology for Planning: National GIS Mission Mode Project would be implemented to facilitate GIS based decision making for project planning, conceptualization, design and development.
• Technology for Cyber Security: National Cyber Security Co-ordination Center would be set up to ensure safe and secure cyber-space within the country.

6. Information For All

• Government to pro-actively engage via social media and web based platforms to inform citizens.
• MyGov.in has already been launched as a medium to exchange ideas/ suggestions with Government. It will facilitate 2-way communication between citizens and government.

7. Electronics Manufacturing – Target Net Zero Imports

8. IT For Jobs

• 1 Crore students from smaller towns & villages will be trained for IT sector jobs over 5 years.
• BPOs would be set up in every north-eastern state to facilitate ICT enabled growth in these states.
• 3 lakh service delivery agents would be skill trained to run viable businesses delivering IT services.

9. Early Harvest Programmes

• IT Platform for Messages: A Mass Messaging Application has been developed by DeitY that will cover elected representatives and all Government employees.
• Biometric attendance: It will cover all Central Government. Offices in Delhi.
• Wi-Fi in All Universities
• Public Wi-fi hotspots: Cities with population of over 1 million and tourist centres would be provided with wi-fi hotspots to promote digital cities. The scheme would be implemented by DoT and MoUD.
• National Portal for Lost & Found children: This would facilitate real time information gathering and sharing on the lost and found children and would go a long way to check crime and improve timely response. Recently the KhoyaPaya Portal was launched.

Programmes launched under Digital India Campaign

Jeevan Pramaan

This is an Aadhar-based Digital Life Certificate for pensioners, in a move that could eventually benefit over a crore pensioners.

This digital certification will do away with the requirement of a pensioner having to submit a physical Life Certificate in November each year, in order to ensure continuity of pension being credited into his account.

The Aadhar-based Digital Life Certificate will go a long way in reducing hardship, which so many senior citizens have to go through to produce a Life Certificate everyyear.

E-Bhasha

The mission of e-Bhasha is to develop and make available computing technologies and tools in Indian languages for content creation, knowledge sharing and delivery of public services in Indian languages through Information and Communication Technologies. Wider access of the e-Governance initiative can be achieved only through localization of initiatives and e-Bhasha intends to play a key role in achieving the greater objectives of Digital India. The State governments in coordination with the Central government can implement the various strategies planned under e-Governance by leveraging tools and technologies developed so far.

One of the main thrust areas of e-Bhasha is to aid the objective of e-Kranti, which is to accelerate the implementation of localized e-Governance in the country. The major objectives of e-Bhasha are as follows:

• Localized capacity building at various levels.
• Identify gaps in technology areas for fuellingfurther research, especially speech and mobile technologies.
• Evolving Localized Software Development Life Cycle (LSDLC) as a comprehensive reference for facilitating internationalized architecture software design and implementation

E-Basta

In line with the government’s Digital India initiative, this project has created a framework to make school books accessible in digital form as e-books to be read and used on tablets and laptops. The main idea is to bring various publishers (free as well as commercial) and schools together on one platform. In addition to the portal, a backend framework to facilitate the organization and easy management of such resources has also been made, along with a web based application that can be installed on tablets for navigating the framework.

Digital Locker

• Providing Online facility for government and other agencies to send the electronic documents of citizens, storing legacy government certificates / documents
• Providing accessibility from anywhere and at anytime basis, verification from the source in case of government issued documents
• Providing facility to share the documents with service providers
• Getting rid of physical possession of documents and physical visits for availing services
• Safe and secure authentication through Aadhaar (UID)
• Coverage e-District, Educational Certificates…etc

Vidyut PRAVAH

This is a mobile application launched by government to provides highlights of the power availability in India on real time basis.

Salient Feature of Vidyut PRAVAH mobile app

• The main features include dashboard for All India summary, link for each states from All India Map and state specific pages on single click.
•  It provides a wealth of information pertaining to the current demand met, shortages if any, surplus power available and the prices in the Power Exchange.
•  The real time data and comparison with previous day or year data is also available.
•  It is a user friendly interface which facilitates all the consumers or stakeholders in visualization of the power availability and prices at the overall country level and at States and UTs level based on the Geographical map of India.
•  The information disseminated through the Application will empower the consumer, thereby leading all the stakeholders to be more responsive and efficient, bringing more economy to the country.
• The app is aimed at empowering common people to demand 24X7 power from the states and is expected to take transparency to the next level and make state governments more accountable.
• The Vidyut PRAVAH mobile application will provide date pertaining to market price of power from power exchange, value of current all India demand in GW and all India and State shortage including peak hour and total energy shortage.
• An all India Power map will showcase surplus power available at power exchange in current block, average market clearing price, current and previous day demand met at national level and previous day Peak hour Demand Shortage and Energy shortage etc. The State specific page will show the similar information of selected state.

ISBN Portal

The ISBN portal is a part of central government’s e-governance initiative  for streamlining the  process of registration  for publishers and authors which will make the process userfriendly. ISBN gives an identity to a book without which the bookshops will not sell it.

The ISBN portal seeks to completely automate the process of seeking application, their examination and allotment of ISBNs. The developed software has several modules including users’ registration and online application submission. The automation process also seeks to maintain inventory as well as process the data that will be provided by the users. There will be doing away with receipt of hard copy of any document unless considered appropriate for establishing the identity of the applicant and for confirming the book publishing activity.

eBiz Portal

• eBiz is one of the integrated services projects and part of the 27 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) under the National E-Governance Plan (NEGP) of the Government of India. It was launched in 2013.
• eBiz is being implemented by Infosys Technologies Limited (Infosys) under the guidance and aegis of Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India.
• The focus of eBiz is to improve the business environment in the country by enabling fast and efficient access to Government-to-Business (G2B) services through an online portal.
• The government aims to integrate more than 200 services to the portal within a few years. An objective of the project is to improve India’s ranking in the World Bank’s Doing Business index.
• Businesses that are already operating in India or planning to start operations can use the portal to obtain licences, approvals, clearances, no objection certificates, permits and even for filing of returns.
• Once these services pertaining to starting, running and closing down a business – completing the entire lifecycle of a business entity — are integrated to the eBiz portal, it will effectively become a single window clearance mechanism.

Bharat Net Project

• The BharatNet project, earlier known as National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN), was initiated in 2011 and has already missed several deadlines. The project was to be funded by Universal Service Obligation Fund with the aim of providing broadband connectivity to over 2 lakh gram panchayats (GPs).
• It aimed to leverage the existing fibre optical network of Central utilities — BSNL, RailTel and Power Grid — and laying incremental fibre wherever necessary to bridge the connectivity gap between panchayats and blocks.
• Bharat Broadband Network Ltd (BBNL), a special purpose vehicle was created under the Companies Act of 1956 for execution of the NOFN project.
•  Once implemented, the project is intended to enable the Centre to provide e-services and e-applications nationally and a minimum of 100 Mbps bandwidth is to be made available at each GP with non-discriminatory access to the network for all categories of service providers.
•  The project, having missed several deadlines, is unlikely to be completed by its deadline of December 2016.
•  While in 2014-15, plans were afoot to execute work for 1 lakh GPs(Gram Panchayats), which was later scaled down to 50,000 GPs, data up to March 2015 showed that only about 20,000 GPs had been covered under the NOFN — just about 40 per cent of the planned target. As on December 6, 2015, optical fibre cable (OFC) laying in 32,272 GPs had been completed and 76,624 kilometer fibre laid, according to latest government data.

Sehat(Social Endeavour For Health And Telemedicine)

• SEHAT(Social Endeavour for Health and Telemedicine) is an initiative in furtherance to Government’s commitment to empower rural citizens in having access to information, knowledge, skills and other services in various sectors through the intervention of digital technologies.
• This is launched by GOI in collaboration with Apollo hospitals.
• Focus is to provide these services in about 60,000 common service centres (CSC) wherein the medical staff of Apollo Hospitals will communicate and prescribe generic medicines onlinethrough collaboration with Ministry of Health, by setting up Jan Aasudhi Stores.
• CSC will be the catalyst in bringing about a change in educating and providing medical services to the rural population.
• This scheme will  immensely help in reducing the mortality rates in the country, as the highest MMR and IMR has been observed in the remote areas in the country.
• Telemedicine can provide rural population access for basic, specialty and super specialty consultations. Since 80% of conditions do not require a doctor’s physical presence immediately, they can be dealt with through telemedicine.
• Lessen the inconvenience and/or cost of patient transfers.
• Reduce unnecessary travel time for health professionals