PM reviews National e-Governance Plan

The second meeting of the Prime Minister’s Committee on the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) was held on 1st July 2013 to review the progress of implementation of NeGP. The NeGP was approved by Government of India in May 2006 with the vision to “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”.

2.  As per the decision of the last meeting of the Committee, two Expert Groups, viz., an Expert Committee for preparation of an HR policy for e-Governance headed by Shri Nandan Nilekani and an Expert Group on NeGP chaired by Dr Sam Pitroda were constituted. The recommendations of both the committees will be of immense benefit for fast tracking the implementation of all e-Governance initiatives in the country. During the meeting today, the implementation of the recommendations of these committees was reviewed.

3. The Committee also deliberated upon the following issues:

a. Status of implementation of Mission Mode Projects (MMPs): The Committee noted that out of the 31 MMPs, 14 MMPs are delivering the full range of services while 9 have started delivering some services to the citizens.

b.  Focus on Outcome Orientation – ‘e-TAAL’: In order to develop an outcome orientation amongst the e-Governance initiatives in the country, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) has developed a web portal – e-TAAL (e-Transactions Aggregation and Analysis Layer). The portal aggregates and analyses the transaction statistics of central and state level e-governance projects including Mission Mode Projects, on a real time basis. e-TAAL is expected to enhance the outcome focus of e-Governance programs in the country. The portal is available at etaal.gov.in.

c. DeitY has launched Mobile Seva, a unique countrywide initiative on mobile governance to provide public services to the citizens through mobile phones and handheld devices. The portal is available at mgov.gov.in. As on date, 444 departments across the country have been integrated with MSDG. They are offering over 200 unique services to the citizens. Using this platform, over 15 crore transactional messages for various government services have been sent to the citizens.

A mobile AppStore (http://mgov.gov.in/msdp_appstore.jsp?ln=eng)  has also been launched with 153 live applications for citizens to download and use. The Committee directed all the Government Departments/ Ministries to leverage Mobile Seva for delivery of their services on mobile devices.

d.  Recently, DeitY has implemented a pilot project covering 59 panchayats in three blocks in three states on using the hi-speed connectivity of National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) for delivery of public services like tele-medicine, tele-education, skill development courses and banking services. The lessons from this pilot will be useful in utilising the NoFN infrastructure being planned to connect 2,50,000 gram panchayats.

e. DeitY has developed an e-Gov AppStore to host successful e-governance applications. These applications can be replicated by all government departments intending to implement e-Gov initiatives, thereby saving immense time and costs in application development and hosting.

f. In order to make public procurement more transparent and efficient, the Committee directed that e-Procurement shall be adopted both for publication and processing of tenders by all Government Ministries/Departments.

g. To harness the benefits of cloud technology, DeitY has launched a new initiative named as ‘MeghRaj’ for creating a Government of India cloud (GI Cloud) computing environment at the national level. This initiative will not only optimise utilisation of IT infrastructure, but also enable rapid deployment/replication of e-Gov services.

h. Considering the requirement for an apex institution in the domain of capacity building, training and R&D for e-Governance, the Committee desired that a National e-Governance Academy be established as a national institution.

4.  The Committee also discussed how the emergence of new technologies, concepts and platforms such as cloud computing, mobile platform and the advent of Aadhaar can be leveraged to make the NeGP more effective and speed up its implementation. Incorporating the latest technological advancements and new service delivery mechanisms in NeGPwould usher the country into a new era of e-governance. It will be possible to provide ICT infrastructure on demand for implementation of these projects. Integration of the Aadhaar platform in e-governance projects would help in interoperability, electronic authentication and faster delivery of services to the intended recipients. Further, the integration of the mobile platform for service delivery would enable the government to reach out to citizens in the remotest corners of the country. To achieve this vision, the Committee directed DeitY to formulate the next version of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP 2.0) to tap the potential of significant technological advancements and emergence of new implementation models & delivery mechanisms.