IE 11 Not Supported

For optimal browsing, we recommend Chrome, Firefox or Safari browsers.

Indian Public Service Project Sets an Example.

The objective was not only to offer government-to-citizen services online, but to bring governance to the door-steps of people in remote places while ensuring that the whole process was transparent and corruption-free.

When we think of project that might qualify as an award-wining IT-enabled public delivery system in India, there are a number that could easily come to mind -- perhaps one from IT-savvy states like Karnataka, the Indian state that's home to the global IT hub in Bangalore. Or perhaps Andhra Pradesh which has Hyderabad -- home to most global IT companies -- as its state capital. For that matter, even Delhi (the capital city) or some development from states, like Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, where the state governments have pursued e-Governance actively for years. All these could be states capable of siring award-wining projects.

But who would ever think that Gandhinagar might gain international award-winning distinction? Yet that's what has happened in this sleepy, sparsely-populated district (by Indian standards) in the Indian state of Gujarat.

Gandhinagar, which is yet to experience much of the modernization and globalization sweeping many other parts of India, has just grabbed a place in the digital communities world by wining this year's Stockholm Challenge Award in the public administration category.

This honor is awarded to Gandhinargr's Jan Seva Kendra (or JSK-- literally Center for Public Service), which is described as an initiative offerring "a citizen-friendly single window for providing a plethora of government-to-citizen (G2C) services to the citizens of Gandhinagar, transparently and efficiently."

What's particularly notable about JSK is that the project, according to its founders, was initiated not as something that "had to be done." Rather, its primary purpose was to provide positive governance, and the ICT components follow afterward as an enabler of efficiency and transparency.

"The significant difference between this and other similar projects is its basic driving force," says Sanjeev Kumar, the current District Collector of Gandhinagar. "While other projects are more reactive, JSK is an outcome of a proactive effort."

The aim, according to Kumar, was to replace the traditional governance with paperless and location-independent governance, and reaching effective e-Governance right down to the district level.

Conceived primarily by the earlier District Collector Sonal Mishra (who has now moved on to become Director of Municipalities for the state of Gujarat), JSK was launched in January 2006 with the motto of "Sarvajanah Sevabhilashi", which means the "desire to facilitate service to everybody."

"The objective was not only to offer government-to-citizen (G2C) services covered under the Citizens' Charter (of the Gujarat State Administration), but also to bring governance to the door-steps of people in remote places, online offered through distributed service outlets," says Mishra.

The other important objective was to ensure that the whole process of delivering services was transparent and corruption-free. "We wanted to ensure that red tape gets removed completely," says Kumar.

Concept to Reality
According to its founders, JSK is perhaps the only example of a successful public-private-partnership (PPP) e-Governance project in the Indian system. "And this concept was instilled right from its inception," says Haren Shah, chief executive officer of Gandhinagar -based Peach Computers, a software firm that runs the operations of JSK on "Build-Operate-Transfer" basis.

A good example of how the PPP model helped in successful deployment of JSK is the fact that although much of the funding was contributed by private entities, it still remains largely a government-controlled system.

"JSK required an estimated investment of $900,000, which far exceeded the state government grant of $11000," says Shah. "But thanks to the contributions of the local industries, organizations, NGOs, as well as the General Administration Department of the state government, mobilizing the rest of the money did not pose to be a problem at all. I would say that this project was an actual outcome of public-private partnership, rather than a total government-driven effort."

This is another reason why JSK was implemented in record time. It emerged from

a concept to reality in three months, by which time the trail phase was up and running. The second phase, which was completed last month. focused on the expansion of activities to Business-to-Citizens and Citizen-to-Citizen oriented activities, as well as the introduction of Government-to-Government facilities like sharing of departmental data for efficient administration.

Currently JSK offers 90 different types of civic services, 44 types of affidavits, and several other value-added services that include property-related services, supplies related matters, revenue collection, grant of licenses and issue of certificates, and right-to-information demands.

"JSK combines the application of creativity and technology for the benefit of the citizens it serves," says Haren Shah. Some of the "unique and effective practices" at the Kendra are intermittent village camps, involvement of aged citizens and retired government officials, special assistance to physically challenged and illiterates, SMS-based reports and intimation, as well as status check, barcode-based tracking of documents and biometrics-based identification.

And this means that JSK has been a "stupendous success as well," says Shah. Ever since its inception, this public-delivery system has handled over 150,000 cases, processing as many as 400 cases a day. Besides, according to Kumar, success could also be gauged by the fact that JSK has emerged as "as a successful e district" case study for other state governments.

An E-Governence Project that is Also Going Bricks and Mortar
The services of JSK come cheap. Each transaction cost about $5, out of which about $3 goes to the Gandhinagar administration, while the rest is the revenue for Peach Computers for running the system.

Even at this rate, the project not only supports itself without any additional financial assistance from Government, "which is unusual for an Indian e-Governance project", says Shah, but it is also generating enough surplus to move to the next phase.

And in that phase, besides extending these services to all the four divisions of the Gandhinagar District -- which has a total population size of 1.5 million -- JSK will also bring in some of the brick-and-mortar services within its purview. These include a platform for auctions, matrimonial services, counters for rail/bus/air and cinema, tourist reservation services, bank ATMs, postal and courier services, and even food courts.

'The idea is to use the infrastructure of the delivery centers to offer a few brick and mortar services that many in the district do not have access to," explains District Collector, Sanjeev Kumar.

Impact of the Project
The hundreds of customer feedback comments the project has received to date point out that the district administration is no longer a place of lethargic and tardy services. For example, the processing time for several governance services that once took a day, now are done in less than two hours when applications are filed online.

Moreover, the use of ICT has made government employees more responsible; "now everyone knows that no one can get away shirking their jobs," says Shah.

But JSK's biggest achievement perhaps lays in the fact that JSK has totally changed the perception of government services among the residents of Gandhinagar.

"Citizens of Gandhinagar consider good quality services more as a norm rather than an exception," says Kumar, "which ensures that the Jan Seva Kendra initiative is not only here to stay, but is slated to grow as well going forward."

 


Indrajit Basu is the international correspondent for Government Technology's Digital Communities.

Photo by Praneet Koppula - Girls from the slums of Gandhinagar carry water from the public park nearby. Creative Commons License Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic