e-Governance, Winner 2015

Name of Project: TrackChild- Online tracking System for Missing Children
Project Website: www.trackthemissingchild.gov.in
Name of Organization: Department of Women Development & Social Welfare, Govt. of WB
Organization Website: wbsc.gov.in

Online portal for tracking and rehabilitation of missing children

In September 2008, the West Bengal state government implemented TrackChild – a national portal designed for tracking and rehabilitation of ‘missing’ children as per guidelines provided in the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000, Model Rules 2007 and the provisions of the Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS). The key features are:

• The portal provides an integrated virtual space for all stakeholders and ICPS stakeholders which includes Central Project Support Unit (CPSU), state and district child protection society/units, Child Care Institutions (CCIs), police stations, Child Welfare Committees (CWCs), Juvenile Justice Boards (JJBs), etc. in the 36 state/UTs. It also provides a networking system among all the stakeholders and citizens to facilitate tracking of a ‘child in distress’. It requires data entry and updating at various levels.
• The software provides facilities for mapping of vulnerable locations, i.e. those which have a large number of children reported missing, so that corrective action can be taken in these areas. Monitoring by senior officers of the action being taken by the police to trace the missing children has also been streamlined through the software.
• The portal maintains e-profiles of each child residing in CCIs which facilitates real time tracking of health, development, and rehabilitation status of the child.
• It maintains a repository containing details of child trafficking syndicates and specific case details of trafficking, thus, assisting police in investigating child trafficking cases.
• The portal facilities multi-sectoral data sharing involving key departments of government such as panchayati raj institutes, legal authorities and labour departments. The system was designed in a very scalable way and after successful pilot implementation 7in West Bengal, it was very easily rolled out throughout the country in a year’s time.

Name of Project: Data Digitisation – eDistrict
Project Website: www.demi.co.in
Name of Organization: Demi Solutions
Organization Website: www.demi.co.in

Mobile based system enabling digitisation of government data

Demi Solutions has developed a cost-effective system for digitising all kinds of government data to enable citizens have easy, anywhere and anytime access to all kinds of government records and documents. The system has been implemented for the Sikkim government and has successfully digitised all government data, including documents and records available only in remote government offices. Instead of using traditional flatbed scanners, this innovative system scans documents utilising a custom-built application on an Android tablet with a very high resolution camera. After the scans are completed, the data is sent and synchronised with the backend server over 3G network. The data entry process is extremely optimised on the company’s proprietory platform. The data entry operators view the high resolution image hosted on the developer’s highly available, robust, reliable and extremely scalable cloud infrastructure. This makes it fast, reliable and efficient. The data then goes through a QA process before being verified and pushed to the production server. The company has filed a patent for the innovation,
‘System and method for data digitization’ Patent No: 4167/CHE/2014. The technology involved converts data, cleanses it and accurately takes offline data usually hand written on paper and converts it into a digital format that is searchable. All citizens of Sikkim are benefiting from this solution. Not only does it enable citizens to access government records and documents easily, anytime, anywhere using their mobile phones, it also enables delivery of all public services at district/sub district level in electronic format and, thereby, reduces the number of visits of citizens to a government office/department for availing the services and, thus, eliminating harassment. The data digitisation is also facilitating backend computerisation of district and lower level offices. The system can be used in all states of India.

Special Mentions

Name of Project: Ichangemycity
Project Website: www.ichangemycity.com
Name of Organization: Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy
Organization Website: www.janaagraha.org

Online platform empowering citizens to tackle civic issues

In December 2011, Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, a non-profit, launched a website —www. ichangemycity.com — as an online platform aimed at empowering citizens through technology and propel them from “armchair activism” to “active participation”. The unique feature of I Change My City is that it enables people to network locally to address common grievances, allows them to connect online which more often than not leads to offline civic engagement, which in turn influences civic agencies/governments to respond and work towards improving the quality of services and infrastructure right from the local neighbourhood level. I Change My City works on the 4Cs mantra – Complaint, Community, Connect, and Content:

• Complaint: Post a complaint online on civic issues
• Community: Vote and build a community around the issue
• Connect: Connect with civic authorities and elected representatives
• Content: Provide relevant information to keep citizens Informed. The online platform enables elected representatives get MIS at a constituency level, giving them vital information on their electorate as well as allows them to communicate directly with them. Multiple dashboards on the platform gives them an access to the key civic issues in their constituency, making it an effective reporting tool which enables them to prioritise and find solutions to the most critical civic issues plaguing their wards. Civic agencies, on the other hand, get an effective and dynamic complaint management dashboard, which enables them to view civic issues on the basis of different categories like garbage, streetlights, roads and other services, allowing them to plan their future infrastructure and services requirements on the basis of its criticality and magnitude. So far, ichangemycity.com has on boarded seven government agencies, 10 elected representatives and 1,93,814 citizens of Bangalore. Its mobile app has more than 10,000 downloads.

Name of Project: GIS based Decision Support System
Project Website: www.wamsi.nic.in
Name of Organization: National Informatics Centre
Organization Website: www.wamsi.nic.in

GIS based system helps detect Waqf property encroachments

The National Informatics Centre (NIC) has developed a GIS-based Decision Support System for Encroachment Detection on Waqf Properties in the Waqf Management System of India (WAMSI) project. The system uses satellite imagery to detect encroachment of Waqf properties in order to protect them from vested interests and to ensure that they are used as per the concept of Waqf. The system implemented since December 2014, involves: a) permanently fixing layouts of the Waqf properties on the basis of GPS coordinates; (b) mapping these GIS generated layouts of Waqf properties on to satellite imagery; (c) figuring out changes on the ground, that is, encroachments if any by treating the layouts as templates/cut-outs with respect to various historical satellite imageries under them. Earlier Waqf Properties were not known to the public. This web portal is now providing a platform to provide all the current and updated information about Waqf properties including GIS capabilities and decision support system for detecting encroachments. The system is expected to mitigate such problems as mismanagement of Waqf properties and generation of no or very less revenues, beneficiaries being left out, loss of Waqf properties due to litigations and sale, etc. As a conservative estimate, there are around half a million Waqf properties in India. As of now, the details of two-thirds of the total number of Waqf properties have been entered and the rest are under progress. The process of entering GPS coordinates for such Waqf properties is slow and takes time. The GIS proof-of-concept has been implemented and proven as per the design, and stakeholders are getting benefitted.