Governance2.Org

Your passport in three days, the ambitious Rs 1,100-crore Passport Seva Project (PSP) to be launched by the ministry of external affairs(MEA) on October 1 has been postponed – probably for another month.
TCS was expected to roll out the first pilot Passport Seva Kendra, (PSK) at Bangalore and Chandigarh which would be extended across the country subsequently. According to sources, just before the launch in testing the software, the Standardisation, Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) found about 600 bugs in the software that existed till after the third testing done recently. Continue Reading »

Encouraged by its pilot project Khairat near Mumbai, the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project in India has resolved to distribute three million XO laptops among the children entering schools by the end of 2009.
Chaired by MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte, OLPC is funded by a number of sponsor organisations, including AMD, Brightstar Corporation, eBay, Google, Marvell, News Corporation, Microsoft, SES, Nortel Networks, and Red Hat. While each company has donated $2 million, Microsoft is contributing through its features that are fitted into the XOs.
Each of these laptops costs approximately Rs 12,000 per set, and consumes just 1 watt of power. It has a screen that is visible in sunlight, resistant to water spilled on keyboards, has a dual boot system with Windows XP preloaded and MS Office access and several programmes that are open source-based that have been localised for various regions of India.
OLPC officials hope that if production increases, the price may even come down to Rs 1,000 per set. [Via]

The Bharatiya Janata Party wants to become the most automated political party in the country.
The BJP National Information Technology Cell was set up in July 2007 under Prodyut Bora, an IIM graduate, and now its convenor.
Since then, the party has set up similar cells in 15 State including Tamil Nadu.
While the Delhi party office became the first in the country to achieve complete automation, efforts are on to replicate it in the State by January 2009, R Kothandaraman, president, BJP IT Cell, Tamil Nadu, told Express Buzz.

Every time citizens pay for a driving licence or a marriage certificate in Punjab, they are — unknown to them — funding a variety of goodies for bureaucrats, a right-to-information query has revealed.
The cash is supposed to be used to create infrastructure and run more public services, but instead Government records reveal that Deputy Commissioners have been buying laptops, mobile phones, air-conditioners, plasma TVs, laptops, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, water purifiers and digital cameras says the Hindustan Times.
This money is collected by what are called Sukhmani societies, government organisations that collect “facilitation charges” from the public to perform a variety of government services, including registration of deaths and marriages, driving licences, ration cards and arms licences, under one roof.
After the Hindustan Times expose on the Red Cross, the Punjab government had returned Rs 1.95 crore to the Red Cross, while several IAS officers were forced to pay back lakhs of rupees that they spent for personal purposes.

While Delhi, Chandigarh and Goa are rated the best in terms of e-network access by their households where a State’s e-network policies are concerned, the Southern regions take over, according to an Assocham assessment on ‘E-governance initiatives’.
“A country’s e-readiness measures the current state of its ICT infrastructure and the degree to which its consumers, businesses and governments are able to capitalise on Internet-based opportunities. It determines the degree to which a country is prepared to participate in the networked world. The States have been rated on parameters: network access, e-learning, network society, e-governance and network economy,” said Assocham Secretary, General D. S. Rawat.

• Delhi, Chandigarh and Goa have been rated the best in terms of network access. Moreover, Delhi and Chandigarh are equally well in e-learning, which is based on percentage of colleges and schools with Internet access, universities offering infotech courses and computer labs.
• Network policies, which are evaluated on government’s efforts to address issues, related to telecom and e-commerce is better in most southern States including Maharashtra.
• Network society, which is measured on the number of online companies and local language websites is better in States such as Karnataka and Chandigarh.
• Andhra Pradesh’s initiatives such as Rajiv Internet Village launched in 2004 seeks to provide a host of services to the rural population through its 22,000 kiosks. Due to these measures it is estimated that Andhra Pradesh will capture 41% of the national IT and IT-enabled services market by 2010.
• Sikkim from the North-Eastern region has done well with its community information centres (CICs) and well established network access. [Via]

A rather ambitious e-governance project, which among other things, aims to cut down the time taken to issue a new passport to 3 days from the current minimum 30 days (which usually stretches to even a year), is nearing completion, with pilot projects in Chandigarh and Bangalore, expected to be launched soon.
The Passport Seva Project began as one of the 27 Mission Mode Projects listed in the national e-governance plan. The Union cabinet approved the seven point plan last September, which included turning the current 36 regional passport offices into back-end offices and a private service provider setting up 68 facilitation offices. [Via]

With the Orissa government deciding to launch 8,558 common service centres — Biju Seva Kendra — at least one in each block to provide government-to-citizen, business-to-consumer and business-to-business services to citizens at their doorsteps, villagers would no longer have to run to the capital, district headquarters or towns to get copies of official documents or avail e-services such as Internet or get a railway ticket done.
IT minister Surya Narayan Patro said the common service centres, to function as front-end delivery points for all villagers closer home, were expected to be operational within six months.
Under the government-to-citizen services, providing land record, certificates, details of government schemes and utility bill payment would be delivered. Forms could be downloaded and submitted at the Biju Seva Kendra.
Similarly, services such as typing, photography, Internet surfing, agro-information, railway and air ticketing, astrology and matrimony, mobile coupon, exam results, online education services and distant learning courses and life and general insurance packages would be available under business-to business service. Market research, surveys, rural BPO services, advertising, branding and promotions would be provided under business-to-business package.
Each centre would have a furnished room at panchayat level equipped with a computer, printer, digital and web cameras, scanner, UPS and Internet connectivity.
Set up under a public-private partnership, the private players would set up the common service centres on build, own and operate basis, with the government providing revenue support for the first four years to make the scheme sustainable. [Via]

According to a new study by TCS, India, the world’s IT services backyard, figures quite low in a global e-governance ranking with a per capita IT spend of just $1.29. Compare this with $199 in New Zealand and $153 in Singapore.
According to the WEF Global Information Technology Report, India ranks 44 out of the 122 countries analysed even behind countries like Barbados, Latvia, Tunisia, Thailand and the Slovak Republic.
The White Paper is an attempt by TCS to use its experience in e-Governance projects to define a road-map for India and highlight current impediments like a silo-based approach that is limiting the benefits of technology use. [Via]

Introduced two years ago, India’s largest e-governance project, and the second biggest of its kind in the world, the MCA-21, which enables e-filing of corporate information with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, is set to be revamped shortly.
The ministry is now looking to launch the second generation of e-filing process, and has tied up with TCS for the same.
Once the revamped system is in place, companies would find it still simpler and convenient to file corporate information with the ministry while public and professionals would get easy access to relevant records and effective grievances redressal.
The move will also help in effective compliance of relevant laws and improve corporate governance, according to the Institute of Company Secretaries. [Via]

In a move which would have significant implications, Gujarat is planning to be the first state to provide high-speed connectivity through satellite-based data connections to all its 13,693 gram panchayats, by July this year, enabling video, voice and data offerings in the areas of e-governance, distance education, telemedicine, agriculture and interactive advisory and counselling services.
Each panchayat will have its own email address and more than 13,000 of them will be hosted on the state-owned data centre.
Bharti Airtel, the implementing agency, which began work on the project in January, plans to connect the panchayats with broadband connectivity at speeds of 2mbps. [Via]