E-Biz a firm step towards National E-Governance Plan (NEGP)

The following article is to be viewed in the context of good governence , accountability and transparency which can be achieved by e-governance. What need to be emaphasised is e-governance is only suppliment to GOOD governance but not supplant. The points highlighted below are to be used while answer writing.

Regards

GMStudycenter

Source of the article - http://www.theindiapost.com/2009/09/13/e-biz-a-firm-step-towards-national-e-governance-plan-negp/


One of the bedrock of democratic form of Government is the principle of ‘Good Governance’. It entails: to work with transparency, accountability and responsibility. Therefore, ‘Good Governance’ is the thrust area and online medium is a tool which can enforce the principles of ‘Good Governance’ very efficiently and effectively. Taking a lead from this, Ministry of Commerce & Industry announced one such initiative — e-Biz Project. This project aims at creating an investor-friendly business environment in India by making all regulatory information – starting from the establishment of a business, through its ongoing operations, and even its possible closure – easily available to the various stakeholders concerned.

E-Biz project aims to develop a transparent, efficient and convenient interface, through which the government and businesses can interact in a timely and cost effective manner. Over the years, the Government has been making progressive reforms to improve the business environment in the country. While there have been many positive steps since 1991, more needs to be done to make the country a globally preferred investment destination. For entrepreneurs and established companies looking at operating successful businesses in India, the government needs to provide a regulatory environment that encourages and instill faith in investors.


The e-Biz project will leverage the capabilities and potential of Information and Communication Technology to consolidate regulatory frameworks, to re-engineer regulatory processes, and to provide a platform that can be leveraged for enhanced G2B service offerings.(G2B is Government to Business)

For investors this project will Provide a single stop shop for all business licenses and permits, Eliminate the need to physically interface with various regulatory authorities at the Central, State and local government levels, Provide all information regarding business 24X7 on a single portal and Allow businesses to file various returns, pay taxes and submit compliances through a single interface.

The project would be implemented on a pilot basis in nine Central Government Departments and five States (AP, Haryana, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Delhi) by February 2010. Twenty nine Government to Business (G2B) services relating to Central, State and Local governments will be implemented initially in the first year of the pilot phase. The project would be implemented on a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model, with a term of 10 years. The first 3 years of the term would be the pilot phase, while the remaining 7 years will be the expansion phase, wherein the project will be expanded to cover the whole country and to provide over 200 G2B services and other value added services by suitable private vendors.

The cost of the pilot phase during the first three will be borne by the Government. The investment required in the seven years of the expansion phase would be made by the concessionaire and recovered through transaction charges to be collected from the business entities availing the G2B services.The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion has endeavoured to make the project self-sustaining beyond the pilot phase, when there will be no financial outflow from the GOI. For this, threshold levels of transactions have been prescribed in the RFP, to be achieved by the concessionaire during each year of the seven years of the expansion phase. This will ensure that the concessionaire keeps innovating while providing the services to the users of e-Biz Portal, and adhere to the highest levels of quality in terms of service delivery.

A revenue-sharing formula is prescribed for sharing the revenue between the concessionaire and the Government, once the threshold level of transactions is crossed. The revenues generated through this revenue sharing model are expected to suffice the requirement of the administrative, project management and monitoring expenses from the 4th year onwards. Thus, the viability and sustainability of e-Biz Project is dependent on the extent to which the threshold levels are achieved / exceeded.

Value propositions of e-Biz portal are creation of a “Virtual Single-Window & Integration of multiple service Providers on One Web Based Platform”. The need for emphasizing development of single-window system for business users, and combining forms, payment gateways etc. are of immediate concern towards simplification of business environment. The Government has also been actively engaged on streamlining regulatory reforms, reducing license regime, ease of doing business through e-governance etc. e-Biz is a concerted effort in that direction.

E-Biz Project seeks to provide significant value addition by offering integrated services cutting across multiple agencies within the government – centre, state, and other statutory authorities – so as to reduce the burden of regulatory and compliance requirements and saving cost and time significantly for all stakeholders. For example, by bringing together information and services provided by the various Government agencies into a common service platform, e-Biz enables its customers to find out all the required information and carry out all transactions pertaining to that service, without having to navigate to different websites. Customers need only to do a one-time submission of application for a service, and then be able to receive the results from different agencies just through that one submission. Integrated services required by businesses include: information on business opportunities, start-up services, licensing, business funding, etc. OBLS (Online Business Licensing Service) implemented by the Government of Singapore, is one of the global best practices in integrated G2B services and has been used as a benchmark for the e-Biz project.

The Government is keen to expand the project in the whole country and provide over 200 G2B services, as well as other value added services by suitable private vendors. This project has the potential to create tremendous value for investors and completely transform the existing regulatory scenario in India. Success of several online services initiatives indicate wide-acceptance and demand for online services because it enables delivering services more efficiently and in a cost effective manner. e-Biz which focuses on making information and services available under one roof- enable personalized, transparent and access to information democratic- will empower business in India in a major way.

E- Governance - Bridging distances—the e-way

Dear All , 


The following article is about E-governance -Shankar Aggarwal, Joint Secretary (e-Governance), Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology talked about e-governance initiatives that aim to bring public services closer to the common folk 


The article gives govt's  perspective of how to go about for e-governance Please Prepare Your notes selecting important points from the article.


Regards
GMstudycenter@gmail.com

The Government of India has employed IT on a large scale. Our e-governance initiatives reflect not only a strong commitment to improve operations and scale up the security aspects connected to confidential and sensitive information, but also to e-connect the Center, State and Districts of the country, to facilitate industries and corporate India’s active engagement and participation in the same, to make information readily available to the masses, amongst others.

Towards these objectives, some of the major projects that the Department of Information Technology (DIT), Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, has taken are the implementation of State-Wide Area Networks (SWAN), State Data Centers (SDC), India Portal (www.india.gov.in), State-and National-Service Delivery Gateways (SSDG and NSDG respectively).

SWAN is one of the three core infrastructure pillars of NeGP, the other two being Common Services Center (CSC) and State Data Centers (SDC). The SWAN scheme aims at interconnecting each State/UT Head Quarters with the District Headquarters, and each District Headquarter with the Block Headquarters with a minimum 2 Mbps leased line. It also aims to create a secure Close User Group (CUG) Government network for the purpose of delivering G2G and G2C services.

SDCs are envisaged as state-level digital nerve systems for the secure round-the-clock access and efficient electronic delivery of G2C, G2G, and G2B services. The services themselves can be rendered by the States through CSC and SWAN, the other two infrastructure pillars of NeGP. An SDC acts as a mediator and convergence point between open unsecured public domain and sensitive government environment. It helps various State departments to host their services and applications on a common infrastructure leading to ease of integration and efficient management, ensuring that computing resources and the support connectivity infrastructure are used adequately and optimally. The SDCs will be equipped to host/co-locate systems to use centralized computing power. The centralized computers/servers will be used to host multiple applications.

SDC will have high availability (HA), centralized authenticating system to authenticate the users to access their respective systems depending on the authentication matrix. The idea behind the India Portal is to provide a single window access to the information and services of the Indian government at all levels, from Central Government to State Government to District Administration and Panchayat, for the citizens, businesses and the NRIs. An attempt has also been made through this portal to provide comprehensive, accurate, and reliable source of information about India and its various facets. The information here has been classified into distinct modules, which are also interlinked at relevant places to provide the visitor with a holistic view.

In order to truly realize the vision of the National e-Governance Plan, it is necessary to co-opt, collaborate and integrate information across different departments at the Center, States, and local levels of government, which are characterized by islands of legacy systems, use heterogeneous platforms and technologies, and have differing levels of automation. The National e-Governance Service Delivery Gateway (NSDG), can simplify this task by acting as a standards-based messaging switch providing seamless interoperability and exchange of data.

National e-governance goal in 2009-10

We are aiming for completing the SSDG/NSDG, SWAN, and SDC implementations. We are also striving to have CSCs start delivering G2C services to truly bring ‘public services closer home’ to Indian residents, wherever they may be located within the country.CSCs scheme provides support for establishing 100,000 CSCs in 600,000 villages of India, as in a CSC for every six villages. The scheme, as approved by the Government of India, envisions CSCs as the front-end delivery points for government, private and social sector services to the rural citizens of India, in an integrated manner. The objective is to develop a platform that can help all these three establishments to align their social and commercial goals for the benefit of the rural population in the remotest corners of the country through a combination of IT-based as well as non-IT-based services.

We prefer packaged software

We prefer off-the-shelf solutions (SAP, Exchange, Notes/Domino etc.) or but are open to building our own (or getting a third-party to build a system for us) that satisfies at least three parameters—availability, interoperability, and cost. Hence, as long as off-the-shelf solutions are easily available, support interoperability, and provide value for money, we prefer them over building our own.