IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

"We are committed to fully support e-Governance initiatives of Jammu and Kashmir government and Rs 40 crore has been sanctioned for CSC project in the state," Pilot said after the launch of CSCs outreach programme from Ganderbal in Central Kashmir.

Common Service Centers, which are part of the government’s National e-governance plan allow citizens in rural areas to access e-governance services and more, including access and submit information such as birth certificate, Internet access, e-Learning, electricity bill collection, BSNL bill collection, mobile top ups, railway reservation, LIC premium collection, e-Commerce, etc. They are also acting as banking correspondents.

Union Minister for Information and Technology and Communications Ravi Shankar Prasad on Sunday said rural post offices across the country will also function as common service centres (CSCs) providing e-services.

He said this while asserting that the postal department had a crucial role to play in bringing in digital revolution in the country.

"Our vision of digital India is to ensure that from a mason to barber to a tyre-puncture repairer, all can access newer avenues of growth using communications equipment like a smart phone," said Prasad while inaugurating the revamped building of Bhowanipore post office here.

SSEVL has been in forefront of E-governance sphere not only in Odisha but five other states of India. It started its operation in September 2008 in the state with an objective of transforming rural Odisha by bridging the rural-urban digital divide and in these three years the company is proud to be able to provide a sustainable business model to over two thousand rural youth.

The project which is likely to be at a cost of Rs 6 crore, will extend services like grievance redressal, clarifications on government schemes, contact details of government offices and status of applications or petitions seeking services.

The project, initiated by the ministry of communication and information technology, will be implemented on a pilot basis in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Jammu and Kashmir. The Rs 6 crore project will extend services like grievance reddressal, clarifications on government schemes, contact details of government offices and status of applications or petitions seeking services.

It is 3 p.m., and most establishments have downed their shutters for the afternoon. At the Common Services Centre (CSC) at Krishna Nagar though, it is yet another busy day with customers waiting patiently for their turn at the counter.

The CSCs, formulated by the Union government’s Department of Electronics and Information Technology, were set up across the country as part of the National e-Governance Plan under through public-private partnership. The CSCs offer delivery of multiple services under one roof, covering the areas of governance and private services.

Chief Minister J Jayalalitha inaugurated 151 e-seva centres, a one-stop solution to offer various government services to the people, in different parts of the State through video-conferencing from the Secretariat here.

According to an official release here today, the centres were set up at a total cost of Rs 12.15 crore.

Services such as Income Certificate, Community Certificate, Nativity Certificate, Property Tax, Girl Child Protection Scheme, Marriage Assistance Scheme etc will be offered through the e-centres, the release said.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MoEA) plans to reach Passport Seva to rural areas.

The MoEA, along with Common Services Centers (CSCs) will offer Passport related services through the vast network of over one lakh CSCs across rural hinterland.

The services would be shortly launched in pilot mode at 15 select CSC locations in Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand in the second week of March 2014. The full roll out across the country is expected to conclude by end of March 2014.

The campaign will be flagged-off by Shri Sachin Pilot, Minister of State for Communication & Information Technology, along with Shri Omar Abdullah, Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, from Ganderbal district Mini Secretariat, near Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir, tomorrow.

The central government has been forced to delay its common services centre (CSC) program due to lack of interest from private partners and slow implementation by state governments.

As part of the government’s e-Governance Plan, the CSC scheme was expected to be complete by December 2011, but now it is likely to come up by March 2013.

India has rolled out over 94,000 Common Service Centres (CSCs), of the proposed one lakh, in 31 states and Union Territories 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, a government statement said.

The CSCs provide services in the areas of e-governance, education, health, telemedicine, entertainment and private matters through cost effective video, voice and data content.

Last year, the government took the decision to reposition the CSCs to be a network of Panchayat level 'Bharat Nirman Common Service Centers'. This would pave way for government to serve in the rural areas.

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.

About 18,000 Common Service Centres (CSCs) have been set up in the country to provide IT enabled services to the people in the rural areas. These are part of the overall plan of the Government to establish One Lakh CSCs in 600,000 villages. All the CSCs are scheduled to be operational by July next year. Agencies for setting up of service Centres have been selected in most of the cases. The final number of CSCs in the country is likely to be over 1,13,000, well above the initial target.

Talking to The Indian Express, Principal Secretary, Information Technology, Sarvesh Kaushal said: “The project will be implemented very soon. The state designated agency has identified 2,112 centres in the first phase that will be established in rural areas across the state. There will be one CSC for every six villages. The state has been divided into ten zones for the project.”

"We expect about 60,500 CSCs to be set up and become operational by August 2008 in States such as Jharkhand, West Bengal, Haryana, Bihar, Assam, Tripura, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu," Ashish Sanyal, Senior Director, Department of IT, said at a seminar on `Spreading ICT revolution to rural India.' Rural Marketing Agencies Association India (RMAAI) and Nasscom Foundation organized the seminar.

A senior official of the Department of Information Technology (DIT) of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said here on Thursday that all the 100,000 Common Service Centres (CSC) rolled out across India under the National e-Governance Plan would be provided with Internet connection by mid-2011 for smooth functioning.

Speaking to media persons at a function organised by the Eastern Railway on the occasion of the arrival of the Commonwealth Express at the Kolkata station, Ashis Sanyal, Senior Director of the Department of IT, said that Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has been asked to provide “CSC-wise connectivity — either wireless or wireline” within the stipulated time.