IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah Monday said that e-governance would boost up the Government’s efforts of bringing common masses closer to the administration and giving power to their voices.

Laying foundation of Jammu and Kashmir State Data Centre (JKSDC) in Civil Secretariat premises here, the CM said that the State Government has initiated a programme of establishing Data Centres to provide core infrastructure for supporting e-governance making service delivery to people fast and to the point.

Addressing a high level meeting to discuss the issue of strengthening and upgrading CICs here, the Chief Minister asked the Information Technology and Rural Development Departments to jointly work out a viable model to use the CICs as block centres for dissemination of vital information to the people in rural areas particularly agriculturists.

The CSCs are overseen by 22 Service Centre Agencies (SCAs) across the country. CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd is a national level entity incorporated as Special Purposes Vehicle (SPV) to provide on going support to CSCs and to catalyse delivery of services through the CSCs network. This is a unique Public Private Partnership (PPP) model where Department of Information & Technology partners with Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLE) and Special Service Vehicle (SSV) to deliver the selected services to common people through CSCs.

Will provide IT-enabled govt. services

Fair price shops in the district will double up as citizens service centres to provide IT-enabled government services to the public within three months.

As a step in this direction, authorities have instructed fair price depots to switch to biometric authentication system. Deputy Director of Food and Civil Supplies K.S. Rameshwarappa on Friday said there are 1,031 fair price shops in the district of which 917 were converted to Point-of-Sale fair price shops in February. The remaining must upgrade by March 31.

The calls to the unique number dedicated to provide government services to citizens will be attended by trained professionals proficient in three languages. The initiative is in conformity with the Karnataka Guarantee of Services to Citizens Act (KGSCA), 2011 and the call centre will provide details pertaining to 11 departments and 151 services that fall under the Act. The centre will operate out of Bangalore, but will cater to callers across the State.

With the launch of Passport Seva Kendras (PSK) at two other locations in Bengaluru (one in Mangalore) issuing and renewals of passports have become faster. The on-going reforms in delivery of passport services are envisioned under the Passport Seva Project - a citizen-centric e-governance initiative as part of the National E-Governance Plan. The pilot project was launched in Bengaluru and Chandigarh in May and August 2010 respectively and became a huge hit. More than 30 lakh passport related services have been rendered under the new system.

The centre initially accepted payment of electricity bill of three sub-divisions of Mescom in the city, BSNL's CellOne mobile payment and sale of passport application. As part of the expansion programme rolled out in a phased manner, Mangalore One centres now accept water bill payment, property tax of MCC, BSNL landline bill payment, KSRTC bus ticket booking, and Airtel landline and mobile bill payments.

It has been set up at a cost of Rs. 3.5 lakh

The State’s first citizen information centre has started functioning at Muthukulam, near here. It was inaugurated by District Collector S. Suhas recently. The government has sanctioned funds for setting up citizen information centres in all districts to provide IT-based services to people.

The minister said government has taken several initiatives to create basic infrastructure on district, tehsil and block levels required for the purpose.

The minister was addressing a seminar on “better life in rural communities with ICT” here today. The function was organized by the Institute of Engineering India (Srinagar chapter) to mark the World Telecommunication and Information Society Day 2011.

The purpose of setting up CSCs was to provide Government to Consumer (G2C) services such as payments and fine settlements and Business to Consumer (B2C) services such as provision of goods and services.

These centres will be set up under Private-Public Participation (PPP) mode. Applications for delivery of Government services will be accepted at these centres with fees. The receipts of applications issues by these centres would be deemed to be issued by the designated officer. Selection of private participant for PPP mode, place etc. for running the centre will be made by the District e-governance Society. The software for proper running of these centres is being developed by NIC.

The CSC Scheme was approved by the Government of India in September 2006 for setting up of 100,000 Internet enabled centers in rural areas under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP).

Speaking as chief guest at the at the launch of Common Service Centre (CSC) with the tagline “Nagaland One-bringing public services closer home” at Indisen village and later at a formal programme at the DC’s conference hall Dimapur Saturday, Tovihoto lauded progress made by the 63 CSCs set up across Nagaland initiated after setting up of Nagaland State e-Governance Society (NSeGC) for implementation of e-Governance.

Basic government services will now be rolled out in villages through CSC kiosks. Certificates related to domicile, nationality, caste, marriage, income, employment, birth, death and disability will be available through these centres.

Besides, the kiosks will act as hubs for filing RTI applications, getting a driver's licence and marriage services. States are mandated to roll out all these services by July 2012. The CSC scheme, launched when Dayanidhi Maran was the IT minister in 2005, is making losses.

National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NEILIT) and CSC SPV on Monday signed agreement to offer technology courses through common service centers (CSC) and make one crore people e-literate by 2013-14.

On 2nd August, the CSCs were launched throughout the country and hence this day is observed as CSC day. As a part of awareness drive, Service Centre Agency (SCA) named BASIX organised a workshop in Kumutipentha GP conference hall where Rayagada Tehsildar Sumanta Kumar Das and Block Vice-Chairperson Gowrishankar attended as Chief Guest and Honourable guests respectively. Several Village Level Entrepreneurs promoted BASIX , local youth and PRI members participated.

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah Friday underlined the importance of utilizing information technology to popularize e-governance and bring transparency in government functioning. He said this would also give considerable fillip to ensure prompt delivery of public services.

The Chief Minister said that his government has taken various measures to use IT initiatives to curb chances of corruption and making service delivery prompt. He referred to the measures of e-tendering and e-procurement in various government departments and said that it has upgraded the quality of service and brought more transparency in the functioning.

“We will soon achieve the target of one lakh CSCs. Around 98,000 CSCs have been established as of now,” Minister of State for Communications and IT Sachin Pilot told reporters in New Delhi.

Part of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), CSCs aim to provide e-governance services, education and health services on a massive scale.

Insurers say mere collection and remittance of premium itself costs more money than allowed by the regulator

Insurance sales through Common Service Centres (CSCs) is yet to see big growth. Lack of trained sales personnel as well as low awareness among customers has led to a weak growth in new policies being issued by this distribution channel.

Companies had earlier expressed apprehensions about cost pressures because the regulatory norms don’t support the expenses associated with the CSC channel. Further, with expenses of management tightened, insurers are not in a position to make heavy investments.

Law and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad today directed the government special purpose vehicle CSC e-Governance Services India to start making sanitary napkins in every block of the country.

"I want that in every block our VLE should start revolution of sanitary napkin," Prasad said while directing CSC e-Governance CEO Dinesh Tyagi for making necessary arrangements in this regard.