IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Over 10,300 Common Service Centre (CSC) have been set up in eight States to provide the rural population in remote areas with a mix of government, private and social sector services. The services which are the initiatives of the Department of Information Technology are both IT based and non-IT based. The states are Jharkhand, Haryana, West Bengal, Bihar, Tripura, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh.

The Centres have come up as part of the Government’s plan to establish one lakh Common Service Centres (CSCs) in six lakh villages in the country. The establishment of most of the Centres is likely to be completed by next year.

The Minister asked Jammu and Kashmir Bank officials to complete 120 Common Service Centres (IT-KIOSKS) within the next one month and ensure that by the end of this year all remaining centres within the region of Kashmir and Jammu divisions, are completed.

Bangalore One (B1), a Karnataka government's e-governance initiative, has been serving citizens since 2005. This ‘One-stop-shop' facility that is open 24x7 (mini centres are open from 8 AM to 8 PM) aims to redefine public service under one roof. Here's a round up of available services at the B1 centres.

Official sources told Deccan Herald that the Centre has issued necessary guidelines for ESD regime after amending the Information Technology Act 2008, under Section 6A of the said IT Act. The draft rules called Information Technology (Electronic Service Delivery) Rules 2009, the Centre, notes shall extend to the entire country and State governments adopt them or notify the same immediately in their Official Gazette.

Most of us have been shunted from pillar to post to obtain a simple document such as a marriage or birth certificate. We have been bewildered, confused and angry with having to deal with multiple government agencies, each with their petty egos and all wanting their pound of flesh.

But now, those in rural Bangalore no longer need to worry as these chores are set to be made hassle-free. The government is embarking on a scheme to open 5,000 Common Service Centres (CSCs) at the gram-panchayat level where these documents can be obtained across a counter.

With a view to make the administration citizen-friendly by lessening the time people spend on queues to pay their bills, the State Government has launched MysoreOne Integrated Citizens' Service Centre.

He was speaking at a special lecture organised as part of the Legal Services Day at JSS Law College in the city on Tuesday.

"Aadhaar centres in the district will be increased from the present 75 to 450," Vidyashankar said and added that plans to open 24x7 Aadhaar centres will be discussed with the district administration.

Under the project, citizens in rural Karnataka get 39 services, ranging from pension, caste certificates, death/birth certificates and land documents to utility payments. Apart from government to citizen services, the project will include business to citizen services (insurance services, education) at an affordable cost.

Many of the Bharat Nirman Centers, earlier known as Common Service Centers (CSC), the main tool of national e-governance program, are slowly fading out due to the lack of fund and improper connectivity issue.

"We are seeing the impact of slowdown on Service Center Agency (SCA). They are unable to manage funds which have slowed the rate of CSC roll out," said Chandra Prakash, Principal Secretary, Department of IT and Electronics, Uttar Pradesh at the 6th Assocham National Summit on E-Governance.

The Indian government’s programme for Common Service Centres (CSCs), which planned for 100,000 kiosks in at least 650,000 villages, has registered 84,000 CSCs.

As part of the National eGovernance Plan (NeGP), the programme is intended to provide citizens with services at their doorsteps. But some operational hurdles, including those pertaining to the village-level entrepreneurs running the CSCs, remain to be addressed.

Such a centre is being established for the group of 5-6 villages which would provide facilities through electronic media. In this way the villages living in dark and lack facilities and knowledge would be brought in main stream of the nation as well as the entire world. Light of knowledge remains for ever and is permanent, which gear up the development.

All these Sevamitra Kendras are connected with broadband service. Because of this, the district collector can see and read from his office whatever complaints are received at the Kendras and how much of them have been disposed of. According to the nature of the complaint or application the case is quickly disposed of. These Sevamitra Kendras are being run in rural areas and they are gaining popularity every day. The main reason for the popularity is that people's long pending problems are being solved within minutes!

It doesn’t help when people are required to come again and again as the required documents are not made available due to a number of reasons — staff crunch, system failure or insufficient availability of data.

The CFC, established with the noble intention of helping the taxpayers in the year 2002, is ironically drawing lot of flak from the same people. It started with the main objectives of saving customers from lengthy procedures and running from pillar to post for basic facilities like new water connections, paying of bills, etc and to get their grievances redressed under one roof. But unfortunately, things have changed a lot along the way.

These kiosks would serve as a common centre for a host of activities like getting licenses, property tax registration, bus pass, railway tickets, passport and so on. CSC is one of the core IT enabled initiatives under the national e-governance plan (NeGP).

The companies will set up rural kiosks — one CSC for every six villages — which will deliver all necessary services to villagers and access to information on government schemes, agriculture market and other relevant data. Chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, who attended the ceremony to sign MoUs, described the development as Maharashtra’s big step towards taking IT from a “handful” to the “masses”.

Long queues and inconvenient timings at the local ward office to get a birth certificate or pay a bill are soon set to become history. The BMC has tied up with Internet company Sify to provide these services through its 250 i-way cyber cafes across Mumbai.

The Common Service Centres will come up in the rural areas with at least one centre in every Gram Panchayat in the state. Stringent service level agreement has been prescribed to ensure the service quality. CSCs will deliver government to citizen (G2C) services like land records, registration, certificates, details of the government scheme, pension scheme, utility bill payments, road transport and employment exchange.