IT spending by the government sector stayed strong during 2005-06; in fact, automation was one area no government flinched from embracing aggressively, be it on the left, right or center in ideological terms. Result: it was not just the UPA government in the Center, but also a BJP government in Gujarat and a Left Front regime in West Bengal who looked at increasing IT deployment. More and more e-Gov implementations started taking place, and Indian administration was finally on the verge of achieving maximum automation like advanced democracies in the West. As a consequence, IT spending by the government increased by 30% to reach Rs 6,934 crore in 2005-06.

Central Projects
The National e-Governance Plan drawn earlier had identified certain mission mode projects; 2005-06 witnessed efforts to implement these projects at the Centre, State and integrated service levels aimed at creating a citizen-centric and business-centric environment for governance as well as the right governance and institutional mechanisms. Some of the key Central Government projects included MCA21, Income Tax, Passport, Visa and Immigration, National Citizen Database, Central Excise and Pensions.

MCA21 involved the modernization and computerization program of the Ministry of Company Affairs that envisaged electronic filing of company documents through an entirely paperless process; the Income Tax project conceived by the Central Board of Direct Tax under the Ministry of Finance looked at setting up a pan-India network to cover 745 Income Tax offices in 510 cities and 12,000 online users over a hybrid network comprising optical fiber leased lines, ISDN for backup and VSAT connectivity for remote locations. The Passport project was conceived under both the Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Home Affairs.

The objectives of the National Citizen Database project conceived by the Registrar General of India under the Ministry of Home Affairs included preparing a National Population Register, National Register of Indian Citizens and a National Register of Residency for non-citizens. The database was also supposed to provide a National Identity Number to each person, a Multi-purpose National Identity Card to each citizen and a Multi-Purpose Residency Card to non-citizens. The Central Board of Excise & Custom under the Department of Revenue also started computerization of income tax system including dissemination of tax-payer specific and tax-related information, PAN and TAN related services, e-filing of returns/demat of TDS certificates, grievance redressal mechanism and direct tax advisory services.

State Gov & Integrated Services Projects
On the state government front: the Land Records project of the Ministry of Rural Development aimed to facilitate on-demand distribution of land record entries and related information, online filing of mutation applications, submission and tracking of complaints as well as location details of plots along with ownership. The Department of Agriculture and Co-operation, on the other hand, started to establish a nation wide communication network for effective and speedy information exchange in agricultural marketing related areas as well as empowering farming community with market information, thereby expanding marketing opportunities for obtaining better returns. This project also envisaged a joint collaboration between the Directorate of Marketing & Inspection, NIC as well as state governments.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highway embarked on computerization of Driving License and Registration Certificate and subsequently creating a state and national database connecting all state RTOs. Other major State automation projects included property registration by Department of Land Resources, treasuries and commercial taxes under Ministry of Finance, municipalities under Ministry of Urban Development & Poverty Alleviation, gram panchayats under Ministry of Panchayati Raj and police in Union Territories under Ministry of Home Affairs.

Under integrated services, the Department of IT initiated the nationwide program to create a network of Common Service Centers (CSCs) across the country. These centers are serving as outlets for the provision of e-government, entertainment, telemedicine, e-commerce and information services ubiquitously. The plan was to establish 100,000 CSCs in the rural areas by 2007 and the mission went more or less on track during 2005-06. The Department of Industrial Policy also embarked on promoting e-business adoption by establishing a single window for G2B services for Central, State and local governments. The EDI project of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and e-Courts under the Department of Justice/Ministry of Home Affairs also started while the e-Procurement project under Ministry of Commerce & Industry was considered for inclusion. 

The SWAN Dance
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs earlier approved the scheme for establishing State Wide Area Networks (SWANs) across the country in 29 States/6 Union Territories at a total outlay of Rs 3, 334 crore with a Central Assistance component of Rs 2,005 crore over a period of five years. Under this scheme, it was proposed to provide Central Assistance to States for establishing SWANs from State Headquarters upto the Block level with a minimum bandwidth capacity of 2 Mbps. SWAN proposals from 20 States/ UTs have been sanctioned, and a total outlay of Rs 1,384 crore and Rs 277 crore has been released. Feasibility study for SWAN from two States and proposal from 5 more of States/UTs have been received and are currently being processed for sanction at the end of 2005-06.

Interesting Pilots
The project on Rural Area Development Monitoring and Information Systems (RAMIS), under GIS/GPS based application for e-Governance was being implemented on a pilot scale at Pudukkottai district, Tamil Nadu. It is basically a Multipurpose Information System and Spatial Decision Support System built in GIS environment with advanced Geodatabase.

The Land Resources Information System (LRIS) in Mysore District was being implemented by Karnataka State Remote Sensing Application Center, Bangalore in collaboration with Department of IT and Biotechnology, Government of Karnataka for demonstration at Mysore district. In this project a parcel level up-to-date comprehensive land information system and digital cadastral map will be prepared in support of a broad range of developmental and managerial requirements.

In the Multi-service Card Project for District Fatehgarh Sahib, Punjab, the data collection and data entry work for 125 villages was completed as part of the pilot project. It is intended to provide Smart Card to 1.32 lakh people so that e-Services could be facilitated through the system being implemented.

Welcoming Open Source
A National Resource Centre in Free/Open Source Software with a budget outlay of Rs 4.97 crore was set up in Chennai as a 3 years project. The Centre is in the process of creating 1000 F/OSS professionals, an F/OSS portal, Software-Open Architecture (SOA) based solutions, a series of device drivers and regional languages localization tools for public utility computerization systems with an aim to promote an appropriate eco System for F/OSS in the country and promote open standards and interoperability features between various systems.

During 2005-06, necessary infrastructure including premises, manpower and equipment was augmented and about 100 teachers from various Engineering Colleges of Tamil Nadu was trained to start Elective papers on the Free/Open Source Software in their BE/B Tech degree program in Computer Science and Engineering/Information Technology. The government sector was one of the key drivers for Linux adoption (the key engine for open source software) in the country during 2005-06. In fact, open source software on Linux platform particularly was one of the primary growth engines for e-Governance in India.

The governments of seven states, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal were running their treasury applications on Linux. The Provident Fund application of Bihar, the Secretariat in Mizoram, the Stamp Duty application in Andhra Pradesh, the Land Record application of Maharashtra, the RTOs of all the North Eastern states; Linux found several takers in many states across the country. The Central Government was not lagging behind-the innovative ePost project of the Post & Telegraph department, the IndiaGov portal and various other applications of the Election Commission, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Labor and Ministry of External Affairs were also running open source software.

Localization of Linux was one major factor behind this success with the government. Not only was it localized into five languages, even applications
were rolled out for government in local languages. This year, there are plans to introduce it in eight more languages.

Rajneesh De
rajneeshd@cybermedia.co.in

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