National e-Governance Plan

NeGP (National e-Governance Plan) is a plan of the Government of India to make all government services available to the citizens of India via electronic media. This plan was an outcome of the recommendations of the second Administrative Reforms Commission".^[1] It is under the administration of the Department of Information Technology of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India.^[2]

Background

With the widespread usage of IT, computers, mobile phones, Internet and other components of the ICT technologies in India over the last couple of decades, the need for eGovernment in India was finally articulated in the form of the 11th report of Second Administrative Reforms Commission titled "Promoting e-Governance - The Smart way Forward"^[1]. According to the Paragraph 83, Report of the Working Group on Convergence and E-Governance for The Tenth Five Year Plan (2002–2007), Planning Commission, November, 2001, SMART government is defined as ‘Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsive and Transparent’ government. The ARC report was submitted to the GOI on 20 December 2008^[3]. The report cited several prior initiatives as source of its inspiration including reference to the Singapore ONE programme. The ARC report defined the need for eGovernance to bring the government closer to its citizens (G2C) and businesses (G2B) while promoting inter-government agency cooperation in a friendly, convenient, transparent and inexpensive fashion.^[3]. According to this report the goals of e-Governance were defined as follows:

1. Better service delivery to citizens
2. Ushering in transparency and accountability
3. Empowering people through information
4. Improved efficiency within Governments
5. Improve interface with business and industry.

The report recognized the existence of ongoing eGovernment initiatives in India at that time and recommended them to be consolidated under NeGP for coordinated implementation.

Introduction

With the last mile service delivery as its core objective, the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) was formulated by the Department of Information Technology (DIT) and Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances (DAR&PG). This would involve several focus areas including development and delivery of citizen-centric services through Common Services Centers. This requires application development of government services in transparent, service oriented and citizen centric format.^[2] Additionally, development of ICT infrastructure, digitization of current records, establishing connectivity and setting up delivery outlets would be the other aspect of project implementation. Besides improved governance and improvement in quality of life for Indian citizens, the project also aims to deliver substantial cost savings in governance^[1][2][4]. Given that NeGP aims to provide a whole host of Union & State Government services to the common man, it is planned as a centralized initiative with decentralized implementation.^[4] For this purpose, other than the citizen-centric application development, interoperability of applications and a common and robust nationwide infrastructure is also required^[4]

Vision

The NeGP has the following vision: “Make all Government services accessible to the common man in his locality, through common service delivery outlets and ensure efficiency, transparency & reliability of such services at affordable costs to realise the basic needs of the common man.”^[1][4]. This vision articulates the priorities of the Indian government for improved governance through use of technology leading to the improvement in quality of life for the average Indian citizen.

Governance

NeGP is monitored and coordinated at the highest level by the National e-Governance Advisory Group.^[5] Appointments to the Group were done in first week of November, 2010 with its first scheduled meeting on 12 November 2010. It is headed by the Minister of Communications & Information Technology, Government of India. It is the apex advisory body to the government on policy issues and strategic interventions necessary for coordinated progress across the various Union/State government departments/ministries for timely implementation of eGovernance across the country. Currently it includes various eminent personalities of India including Nandan Nilekani Chairman, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI); Shashi Kant Sharma, Secretary, Department of Information Technology; R. Chandrashekhar, Secretary, Department of Telecommunication; Dr. Mrutyunjay Sarangi, Additional. Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat; D.V. Singh, Special Secretary, Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances; Dr. B.K. Gairola, Director General National Informatics Centre among other central government, state government, industry and academia representatives. Appropriate authorities have been identified and assigned the duties of laying down standards, providing technical support, developing policy guidelines, undertaking capacity building, R&D work, etc. Department of Information Technology (DIT), National Informatics Centre (NIC), Standardization Testing and Quality Certification (STQC), Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) and National Institute for Smart Government (NISG) are some of the organizations at the national level working on this project.^[4]

Implementation

Infrastructure

This would include development of National/State Service Delivery Gateway (NSDG/SSDG)^[4], State Wide Area Networks, State Data Centres (SDC), Common Services Centers (CSC) and development of eForms for service delivery.^[6] This infrastructure is supposed to be common for all projects under the NeGP umbrella. It is being created in every State and Union Territory to ensure seamless and single-window delivery of public services to the common man.^[4] The infrastructure requirements of NeGP are broken down into core and support infrastructure requirements. The core infrastructure consists of National eGovernment Intranet (NICNET, ERNET and other service providers), state wide Intranets, National eGovernment Data Center, State Data Centers, Security Infrastructure (PKI etc.), Resource Centre for eGovernance, GIS National Spatial Data Infrastructure and Language Resource Centre.^[7] The support infrastructure includes service delivery infrastructure at state, district, block and village levels including wireless infrastructure for last mile connectivity^[7]. Further E-post and integrated service delivery front ends like the proposed Common Services Centers (CSC) are required.^[7] as part of the 'support infrastructure

The three primary pillars of NeGP infrastructure are State Wide Area Networks (SWAN), SDC (State Data Centres), and CSC for web-enabled anytime-anywhere services and information.^[8]

Web enabled delivery of public services

Mission Mode Projects

NeGP comprises 27 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs)^[2] encompassing 10 Central MMPs, 10 State MMPs and 7 Integrated MMPs spanning multiple Ministries/ Departments^[9]. It was approved on 18 May 2006 ^[9] by the Government of India. "Mission Mode" implied that the objective and the scope of the project are clearly defined, that the project has measurable outcomes and service-levels, and the project has well-defined milestones and time-lines for implementation. These MMPs include:^[6][2]

Central MMPs	State MMPs	Integrated MMPs
Banking	Agriculture	CSC
Central Excise & Customs	Commercial Taxes	e-Biz
Income Tax (IT)	e−District	e-Courts
Insurance	Employment Exchange	e-Procurement
MCA21	Land Records	EDI For eTrade
National Citizen Database	Municipalities	NSDG
Passport, Immigration & Visa	Gram Panchayats	India Portal
Pension	Police
e-Office	Road Transport
Foreigners Registration & Tracking	Treasuries

Capacity building, awareness, communication

Sstakeholders of NeGP include at least 20 central departments, 360 departments across 35 states/UTs and nearly 500 implementation agencies.^[4] Given this this task was estimated at more than 70,000 man-years, proper estimation and implementation of capacity gaps are required. The three specific capacity gaps in the states envisaged to be filled were:^[4]

• Lack of personnel with appropriate background and aptitude,
• Inadequate skill sets of personnel already deployed
• Lack of appropriate institutional framework to handle the specific program

To address these, the following steps have been planned^[6]:

• Support for creation of State e-governance Mission Teams (SeMTs)
• Support to Central Project e-Mission Teams (CPeMTs)
• Support to State Administrative Training Institutes
• Human resource management^[7] - This component addresses several areas including training for :
  • eGovernance policy makers like Chief Information Officers, etc.
  • Project specific training
  • General IT Skills and Competencies along with Special training programmes for specialists
  • Security, use of local language solutions, Advanced courses architecture, language technologies
  • Equipping National/State Institutions of Public Administration for eGovernance Training etc.
• Creating awareness about NeGP - Various strategies for change management and raising awareness are planned including:^[7]
  • eReadiness assessment of various States/ Departments
  • Setting up of Virtual eGovernance Forums
  • Assessment of e-Projects
  • Best practices for eGovernance
  • eGovernance National Resource Database
  • Newsletters on eGovernance, workshops/ seminars/ Conferences
  • Competitions and Awards
  • eGovernance forum for NGOs, Pvt Sector, Academic Training Institutions
  • Publicity and Awareness(media, films etc.)

Standards, quality and security

These would require:^[6]

• National Policy on Open Standards
• Localization and Language Technology Standards
• Biometrics, Digital Signature, Interoperatibility etc.
• Quality Assurance & Conformance
• Network and Information Security

eGov Knowledge eXchange

To assist the government the NISG (a non-profit organisation) started a portal project called eGov Knowledge eXchange.^[10] It is a collaborative effort to collect, develop and share knowledge and material on eGovernance initiatives across the different government agencies, stat government, union government and private institutions of India. The objective is collective learning from each others projects and learning lessons. Like other collaborative portals, content development is shared by stakeholders of eGovernance: the Department of Information Technology (Government of India), Central Ministries & State Governments in India, Academics, and Industry working in the domain of e-Government. This portal aims to develop knowledge about eGovernance domain from public, private and government levels.

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} "Second Administrative Reforms Commission Report". Arc.gov.in. http://arc.gov.in/11threp/ARC_11th_report.htm. Retrieved 2011-03-01. 
2. ^ ^{a b c d e} "Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & IT, India". Mit.gov.in. http://www.mit.gov.in/content/national-e-governance-plan. Retrieved 2011-03-01. 
3. ^ ^{a b} "Second Administrative Reforms Commission Preface to the Report" (PDF). http://arc.gov.in/11threp/ARC_11thReport_preface_contents.pdf. Retrieved 2011-03-01. 
4. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i} "India Development Gateway". Indg.in. http://www.indg.in/e-governance/e-governance/egov-plan. Retrieved 2011-03-01. 
5. ^ "National e-Governance Advisory Group reconstituted". Pib.nic.in. http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=66737. Retrieved 2011-03-01. 
6. ^ ^{a b c d} "NeGP overview" (PDF). http://www.nisg.org/knowledgecenter_docs/A03060004.pdf. Retrieved 2011-03-01. 
7. ^ ^{a b c d e} "eGov approach in India" (PDF). http://www.nisg.org/knowledgecenter_docs/A01000001.pdf. Retrieved 2011-03-01. 
8. ^ "Awareness of NeGP" (PDF). http://www.nisg.org/knowledgecenter_docs/A01000004.pdf. Retrieved 2011-03-01. 
9. ^ ^{a b} "Mission Mode Projects". Mit.gov.in. 2010-08-13. http://www.mit.gov.in/content/mission-mode-projects. Retrieved 2011-03-01. 
10. ^ "eGov Knowledge eXchange". Nisg.org. 2010-02-06. http://www.nisg.org/kcindex.php. Retrieved 2011-03-01. 

External links

India portal

• National eGovernance Website
• Informatics An eGovernance publication from National Informatics Centre
• Saaransh – A compendium of Mission Mode Projects under NeGP