IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

People in rural parts of the country can pay their utility bills such as electricity, water and telephone at common service centers (CSC) through debit or credit cards as well as in cash.

The Reserve Bank of India has granted Bharat Bill Payment Operating Unit (BBPOU) the licence to function as CSC e-Governance Services India, which manages around 1.66 lakh common service centres across the country.

The biggest delay has been in readying government services -- such as issue of land records, collection of taxes etc.. through the Internet or through these kiosks. Only around 30% of the work that needed to have been done by now by state governments have been done, with several states still in the process of setting up the physical infrastructure needed to enable such e-services.

Rural population of Bilaigarh block of Chhattisgarh is getting digitally empowered under National Digital Literacy Mission (NDLM) conducted at Common Service Center (CSC) of village Sarsinwa.

Sarsinwa based CSC owner Laxami Narayan is running the e-Governance facilities for rural masses since last five years and under the NDLM, he is imparting digital literacy training to around 500 rural people of Bilaigarh block. According to associate vice-president of CSC e-Governance Service India, Madan Mohan Rout, 50 lakh rural population across India is being targeted to be digitally literate and in Chhattisgarh, the target is around one lakh people.

People in rural areas will soon be able to access Aadhaar-related services at the common service centres (CSC) following the UIDAI’s authorisation to these centres to resume such services. The CSC had earlier stopped providing Aadhaar-related services after the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) withdrew authorisation from them following debates around data security of the 12-digit unique identifier.

“UIDAI has authorised CSCs to start printing of Aadhaar cards. Users will be charged standard fees as prescribed by UIDAI. This work is expected to start in a week,” CSC e-Governance Services CEO Dinesh Tyagi said. There are 3.9 lakh village level entrepreneurs (VLE) that are running common service centres in rural areas across the country.

Of proposed one lakh, over 94,000 Common Service Centres (CSCs) have already been rolled out in 31 States/UTs so far in an endeavor to take Information Communication Technology (ICT) to the remotest part of the country. 12,510 of these are located in the naxal affected areas of 11 States. Ten States including Gujarat, Kerala, Sikkim, Tripura, Jharkhand, Puducherry, Manipur, Chandigarh, Goa and Delhi have completed 100% roll out. Under the Scheme, connectivity has been provided to 67,883 CSCs by April 2011. Department of Information Technology (DIT) has also developed an Online Monitoring Tool for monitoring the uptime of the CSCs. It is possible to monitor real time performance of the CSCs through this tool.

More than 1,500 Common Services Centres (CSCs), created to deliver various digital services to people across Jammu and Kashmir, are reported to be defunct, even as people, especially in rural areas, are facing immense hardships to avail of services like Aadhaar and PAN cards in their respective areas.

Under the CSC scheme launched by the Government of India (GoI) and supervised by the ministry of Information Technology, each J&K Gram Panchayat was supposed to have at least one CSC by this year “to bridge the gap of digital divide between rural and urban areas” and provide access to a range of digital services.

A society was formed for the Common Service Centres of Imphal West under the name of " e common service centres, Imphal West Society" on June 21.The head office for the society will be at Tera Yambem Leikai.

The elected office bearers for a year term are Ng Jeevan Meetei, Ch Somorjit and N Maipak as president, secretary, treasurer.

Mention may also be made that there are 399 CSCs in all the districts of Manipur.

The scheme, under the Government's e-Governance Plan, was supposed to come up by December last year, but is now expected to be completed only by March 2013. The Government has already extended the deadline twice earlier.

The Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) has blamed some companies which had undertaken to set up these centres.

When the ambitious project was launched, private firms bid so aggressively that there was negative viability gap funding. Bidders offered revenue support for a four-year period that would set-off against revenue generation through e-governance services. However, that has not happened, as Meena Chaturvedi, CEO of Srei Sahaj e-Village explains: “There is an inherent resistance within the government to give government-to-customer (G2C) services as it will bring transparency into the system. The problem is that services are not coming, besides electricity and connectivity issues. In fact, companies did not understand the rural market at all before getting into the scheme.”

SREI Sahaj e-Village is one of the main pillars of the National e-Governance Plan of the central government. A subsidiary of SREI Infrastructure Finance, SREI Sahaj is mandated by the government to open a total of 28,006 CSCs in West Bengal, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Bihar. As on June 30, the number of CSCs opened by Sahaj was 23,437.

eCourts services have now been successfully rolled out through SMS, email, web, mobile app, etc

Court case information such as judicial proceedings/decisions, case registration, cause list, case status, daily orders, and final judgments of all computerized district and subordinate courts of the country will now be available across all Common Service Centers in the country. The Government of India had initiated second phase of the eCourts project as one of the National e-Governance projects, in August, 2015 with an outlay of Rs 1670 crore. As on date, 16845 district and subordinate courts have been IT enabled.

To expand the reach of convenience offered to EPF members, Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has joined the network of Common Services Centers (CSC), the Union Ministry of Labour & Employment said on Thursday.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed between EPFO and CSC e-Governance Services India Limited (CSC SPV) on Tuesday.

"Our target is to create banking access point in every village through new technology," said Ravi Shankar Prasad.

The government is looking at providing banking services in every village of the country by leveraging technology and the network of Common Services Centres (CSCs).

The withdrawal facility has already been introduced at CSCs whereas opening of accounts is being worked out with the banks and is likely to be rolled out shortly.

Around 13 states has set up 100 percent CSCs in thirteen states as on November 30, 2011, said the ministry of communications in its year end report. The ministry also said that the government has a proposal to set up additional 1.5 lakh Bharat Nirman Common Service Centres i.e. to have one CSC in each panchayat in whole of rural India.

Age will not be a bar for people who wish to learn about agriculture and related topics. People will be taught in batches of eight in an education centre powered by a 1,800-watt solar panel.

The state government will set up a common service centre (CSC) training academy in Gurugram where entrepreneurs from villages will be trained to run CSCs in their villages.

The announcement was made on Friday by chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar who was visiting the Haryana State Electronics Development Corporation Limited (Hartron) campus in Udyog Vihar during his two-day Gurugram visit. The CSC training centre will be located on the same campus and will provide support to entrepreneurs in terms of training and skill development, the CM said.

Envisaged as a Government to Citizen (G2C) interface, the Call Centre enables quick delivery of critical information, which is otherwise either inaccessible or difficult for the citizens to trace. The relevance of a Government / Public Call Centre is more important in the context of increased focus on e-Governance and with the implementation of the Right to Information Act 2005 for providing information to the citizens in a user-friendly manner. This Integrated CCC that was made operational in May 2005 works on all calendar days including holidays, on 24x7 basis.

Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir is planning to set up 4000 Common Service Centers (CSC) across the state to provide multiple facilities to the people living in remote and rural areas.

State Information Technology Minister Syed Aga Ruhullah Mehdi announced it while chairing a meeting of the officers convened to identify the services to be kept available at CSC by different departments.

“J&K Bank’s role in the project (Common Service Centre, a government of India scheme under National e-Governance Plan) is limited and well defined. Technically speaking bank’s role as Service Centre Agency is confined to develop, design, build, rollout and establish the CSCs,” a spokesperson of the bank said in a statement issued to press.

Embarking upon plan to expand the network of common service centres in the State, MLA Jammu East constituency Rajesh Gupta today inaugurated Khidmat Centre at Khatikan Talab here today.MLA Rajesh Gupta while speaking on the occasion said, "The main aim was to achieve the objective of financial inclusion and proving doorstep banking services to the people". MLA further said that set up of this centre on a Franchiser-Franchisee basis, will act as Common Service Centers for delivery of Government to Customer and Business to Customer services including financial services to the people.