Strong customer focus is hallmark of the services sector. Government is a major player in services by providing a variety of services free or at a nominal fee and the bulk funded through the taxpayer’s money. Governments are voted to power or out of power based on their service delivery. The recent political upheavals in the Vidhan Sabha elections in some Indian states being the recent examples.

Government may benefit therefore by imbibing the best practices of the private sector players in the services industry. Karnataka has already introduced V-SAT based online banking for its treasury savings banks and Kerala that has set a trend in successful implementation of e-governance projects cannot be far behind. Initially, ATMs will be provided in three district treasuries—Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Kozhikode.

And later on, it will be expanded to the other 11 districts in the state. Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) has been entrusted with the task of developing software and communication infrastructure needed for this service.

Once operational the online facility will allow the account holders of treasury banks to operate their accounts from anywhere in the state. Secondly, pensioners, who constitute a major share of the population will also be disbursed their monthly doles from anywhere in the State. Computerization of 22 district treasuries have been completed, out of the 165 sub-treasuries, 102 have achieved full computerization. The total budget for computerization of treasuries this year is Rs 20 crore and the government hopes to launch its on-line banking services this year itself.

Another initiative is a call center proposed by the Kerala State IT Mission that will act as a friendly interface between the government and its citizens. Once this facility becomes operational, the public would be able to familiarize with the functioning of government departments, whom to approach for solving problems, the procedures for redressal of complaints, the status of their applications or submissions. All this could be accessed through an interactive voice response system (IVRS) either on manual or automatic mode. For this, secretaries in various departments are preparing a set of FAQ’s concerning various departments and a structure for answering specific queries of the public.

The concept of call centers and online banking has been successfully borrowed by the government in its efforts to compete with private sector as well as to provide efficient service to the citizens. In the public sector, Indian Railways and BSNL have implemented online services, IVRS and call centers effectively in their efforts to provide better service to customers. The cue has now been taken up state governments.

The concern is whether imbibing the practices of private sector service players alone will solve the inefficiency in government, as these e-systems need proper maintenance and updating.

Until recently, customers of public sector banks had many unhappy experiences with ATMs— with the cards getting stuck in the machine, the door refusing to open or the machine failing to carry out a simple transaction. Still others who dialed the BSNL Call Center were led to punch certain numbers that finally led to the message, please call enquiry@197 only to be told: ‘You are in the Queue, please wait’.

Or still worse, many government departments who launched their websites with much fanfare refusing to renew their domain name registration after one or two years. For any online solution to be efficient there must also be a good offline back-up mechanism. In Kerala, backend computerization is being undertaken in as many departments as possible in a time bound manner. This along with employee training programs may help in providing better citizen-friendly services.

R Sreekumar / CyberMedia News in Thiruvananthapuram

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