Despite India's competitiveness in the IT sector, use of technology by Government may not be taking off as quickly as desired
But a silent transition is, nevertheless, creeping in, powered by e-governance projects.
The FCI could also not gauge the precise number of beneficiaries under its programmes.
Today, there has been a shift in the way it operates. Under the e-governance plan implemented for the FCI by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), out of the 1,475 food grain depots and 195 locations which house FCI district and zonal offices, 1,000 have been covered.
The linkage has helped capture data pertaining to grain stocks, hence the FCI can now track information on its stock position and sales position without a hitch. It can also determine the quality of food stock at its godowns and with ready information on States with surplus as well as shortages of certain stocks, it can quickly rectify distortions.
"With e-governance promising more transparency and efficiency, we can reduce 50 per cent of the transit losses incurred, and may be able to save Rs 400 crore a year of the FCI's total turnover of Rs 75,000 crore" say officials. However, with the project yet to be completed, there is still a long way to go before the FCI can completely rid itself of inefficiencies. The FCI expects NIC to complete the project by March next year.
Tracking employment guarantee
Another instance where e-governance promises a better return on public expenditure is the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA).
Microsoft's recent report on e-governance reveals that NIC has begun implementing a project in 15-16 States, 117 districts, 825 blocks, 28,807 gram panchayats and 84,001 villages to fill the gaps in the implementation of NREGA.
Under the Act, the Government guarantees 100 days of employment to a member of each household of a village. Employment is provided in certain public projects that require manual labour.
But with no single source of information available on the number of people employed, those who have been paid their share of wages and the projects that have been completed, the scheme is said to be plagued with inefficiencies with regard to fake muster calls and other issues.
NIC seeks to plug some of the loopholes by making public all critical data such as muster rolls, job cards, and list of completed work. It would also like to implement cash payment through e-linkages with the bank or post office savings.
Similarly, in Andhra Pradesh, Tata Consultancy Services has established 657 Mandals in 13 districts. The software generates a job card only after any villager applying under the job guarantee programme is certified by the village pradhan as a bona fide resident.
To avert corruption, taking place while procuring raw material for a project, the software specifies requirements for every project undertaken by the village authorities.
For example, after the village authorities recommend a particular task such as digging a pond and give details about the location of the pond and its rough dimension, the computer at the Mandal office generates information about the kind of material and the number of man days required to complete the project.
In fact, no direct cash payments are made. Instead, the money gets cleared by the system through computer dataand is directly transferred to the post office accounts.
The Microsoft report also cites some other e-governance initiatives influencing different facets of the ordinary consumer's life. One such initiative is the Court Information System (CIS) portal, which connects the Supreme Court, 21 High Courts and state capital city courts. This makes all information regarding judgements, status of cases and the next date for hearing of a particular case available over the Internet.
"From October 2, we have also introduced e-filing of cases for the Supreme Court which will make filing of any case possible over Internet. By 2007, it will be extended to the High Courts and later to the District Courts in the state capitals," says C L M Reddy from NIC. He adds that after delivering the final verdict, the judge would now be required to sign on a soft copy, as soon as he finishes manually signing on the dotted line.
This has already been made mandatory for 34 judges of the Delhi High Court. So with multiple court-related projects implemented under the e-governance plan, how has the penetration at the grassroots level been? " The portal receives about 80,000 hits per day," he says. "With Rs 100,000 crore spent on citizen delivery projects, leakages in the programmes is estimated to be at 50-75 per cent" says Sameer Kochhar, CEO, Skotch Consultancy, a Delhi-based company which, in association with Microsoft, has produced the e-governance report.
Replication of such projects across the country still remains a challenge. Microsoft, in fact, has instituted awards for e-governance projects with the most successful penetration. "We would like to work with the Government on such projects that have higher levels of engagement with the public" says Rohit Kumar, Country Head, Public Sector Unit, Microsoft.
Autor(en)/Author(s): Priyanka Vyas
Quelle/Source: The Hindu Business Line, 16.10.2006
