E-governance to weed out corruption

Stung by the recent spate of corruption scandals, and the slow pace of its e-governance reforms, the centre is considering a bold sunset law for all paper transactions between itself and citizens.

The Rs40,000 crore e-governance plan aims to eliminate corruption and rein in babus by keeping citizens out of government offices.

The online system, in which citizens will have to request all government services only through the Internet, will also have software that will raise an alarm if a bureaucrat does not provide a given service within the stipulated time.

The two aspects — elimination of physical visits by citizens to government offices, and software-based monitoring of delays and service quality, are expected to cut down bureaucratic corruption and harassment.

However, Shankar Aggarwal, the joint secretary at the department of IT, who has been pushing the e-governance initiative, pointed out that progress in the reforms has been slower than expected.

“During the last [apex committee] meeting, it was agreed that we will make it mandatory for all government departments to provide services only in the electronic format from a specific cut-off date,” Aggarwal said.

Once the switch is made, he said, citizens will be able to access government services either by logging in from their homes or by going to internet cafes or special e-kiosks in rural areas. The government will also take steps to give legal validity and recognition to digital signatures that will replace government seals and stamps.

The new law will borrow from similar anti-corruption laws enacted or contemplated by various state governments. Madhya Pradesh, for example, has imposed a time-limit of 3 days for the delivery of 25 state services like the issue of a domicile certificate. Any delay in the issue of certificates — monitored electronically — results in a fine of Rs250 per day imposed on the bureaucrat responsible.   

MP, however, has not yet mandated citizens to file their requests through the Internet and continues to accept them on paper. But this step is being contemplated by Maharashtra, which is about to introduce a bill to force all government departments, local bodies and institutions to have ‘electronic delivery’ of all their services within a cut-off date. “We hope to present the bill in the state legislature by March,” said Vijayalakshmi Prasanna, Director, IT, government of Maharashtra.

The Centre’s move to force the pace of reform has come in the wake of the ‘go slow’ attitude of various state governments and local bodies. While private companies and individuals have established an estimated 80,000 Internet-enabled kiosks — called common service centres or CSCs — across the country to deliver government services, the services themselves have largely been a no-show.

The worst performers have been state and local government bodies, while some of the Central ministries — such as Corporate Affairs and Finance — have had e-services running for many years now.

While all the states were supposed to have digitised all their data and put them on ‘state data centres’ by last year, only 15 currently have the data-centre — the repository of all government records without which no services can be launched.

The state-wide high-speed data networks that were supposed to connect the data centres to government offices and to the retail kiosks are operational only in 23 of the 33 states.

With the back-end not ready, most state government and local government departments have not launched the electronic version of their services. This in turn has hit the private companies and individuals who opened the kiosks or Common Service Centres (CSCs) —forcing many of them to become photocopying shops and internet cafes or shut shop.

BSNL, which was paid Rs880 crore to provide broadband connectivity to the CSCs by September last year, is yet to reach many of the kiosks, forcing the latter to acquire connectivity at high rates.

To fix the problems, even as it forces the pace of digitization through a sunset law, Aggarwal said the government will also provide Rs2,000 per month as a subsidy to all the CSCs.

The subsidy, however, will only be available to the 150,000 kiosks about to be set up and not to the 100,000 that were covered in the first phase, he added. Out of the Rs2,000, Rs500 will be provided directly to the individual running the centre and not to the private company or contractor responsible for the zone.

The government will also provide the kiosks with solar panels to ensure uninterrupted supply of power, added Aggarwal, at a national review meeting of the e-governance rollout in the capital.

Some of the state government representatives took strong objection to plans by panchayats and central government ministries to open parallel kiosks to deliver their services.

“The Centre should take a final decision that the CSC is the interface between the government and the citizen. All digital services should only be given through CSCs [and not other kiosks,]” said Savitur Prasad, secretary of IT for Delhi government.