e-Governance, 2009
EMPOWERING INDIA
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
Empowering India is an initiative to empower citizens with information about political candidates, constituencies, MLAs, MPs, and political parties. The information is presented in a simple and comparative manner so that the voter can make an informed choice during the elections. The information on Empowering India web site is freely available to all visitors. There is constituency level basic information about candidates and elections and a set of analytical tools by which more scholarly visitors could do some analysis. There is also a more advanced Build Query feature, which is allows a range of analytical queries to be created as per one’s own needs. The website has been in news for all the right reasons by the mainstream media ever since its launch in 2004.
JUROR’S EVALUATION
Empowering India is working towards the goal of making democracy more meaningful by encouraging participation, introducing greater transparency, assessing performance, and facilitating accountability in the political process. Their target is to have information in a manner that would be relevant to every voter in the country in every constituency. With the spread of the Internet and through it the local media, any citizen of the country has the opportunity to make an informed choice. This unique concept has been simply and successfully implemented by the organization.
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E-GRAM – A REALITY CHECK
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
E-gram is a report of all services like electricity, drinking water, health, education in Rajasthan right up to the village level. A web based application was deployed to get the village wise amenities and monthly status of these amenities directly from the grass root level. One person from the village itself was entrusted the job of filling in the form, which was filled after gathering views of the Panchayat representatives and common villagers. The aggregation at all possible upper layers has been made available for executives and monitoring agencies. As more than 12 sectors were covered in a single format, it attributes a lot in time and cost savings. It covers more than 400 attributes from these 12 sectors. No additional infrastructure was created to execute this project, as National Informatics Centre’s presence up to district level was leveraged in the project.
JUROR’S EVALUATION
With so many government projects undertaken for the development of the masses, it becomes very difficult to keep track of the effectiveness of these programs. E-Gram offers a way to gauge the real impact of the programs and all of the information is available on computers for any officer up to the level of Chief Minister to see. The project has been implemented in an area which has its own share of unique issues of terrain and climate, making this an important initiative. It is a very good example of Common Service Centre project implemented in the most ideal fashion. Absolutely Democratic and transparent, and citizen oriented.
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JAANKARI
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
JAANKARI facilitation centre under the Right to Information Act as a people oriented project has been initiated by the Bihar Government in an effort to use state-of-art technologies to make information available to the people in an easy and hassle free manner. A user friendly ICT based centre has been set up to assist citizens of Bihar in getting governance related information from Public Information Officers under the RTI Act within the stipulated time frame without even checking the address of the caller. The applicant gets information without having to visit the concerned office or filling up forms. Jaankari helps the caller generate an application Under RTI and file it at the concerned office. It also assists the callers in getting their request recorded / typed out by a Jaankari centre assistant and an email is sent to them and the concerned PIO. Within 35 days a reply to the query is sent.
JUROR’S EVALUATION
The Right to Information (RTI) Act is a revolutionary step towards good governance by providing easy access to any citizen of India to any information on a government ageny. The JAANKARI project has been facilitated by the telephony & telecom revolution happening across the country. Everyone in the state has access to all government information on dialling a fixed and well publicized 6 digit number.
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E-SAMVAD
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
E-Samvad (communication in English) is an integrated e-governance solution linking all higher education departments of Madhya Pradesh. This works on the logic that having separate infrastructure for every other department would entail a lot of financial burden for everyone and that is not desirable. The Higher Education department of Madhya Pradesh has taken help of the departments and given a concrete shape to the project. To strengthen the system, colleges at regional level were linked for realizing information in electronically accessible format. The practicality of this project can be estimated by the study of hit counter attached with the site. E-Samvad is a total and comprehensive solution for all e-governance needs pertaining to the education department in a single window.
JUROR’S EVALUATION
E-Samvad is all about inter-linking all e-governance projects under the Madhya Pradesh education department taking the help of a common infrastructural facility. Earlier information transfer was time consuming and data/information authenticity was at times under question. The uniformity of data from the uses was also a subject of concern. Software modules developed are now used by all users and as a result digital and content gap is completely covered. The concept has been developed by the sole sources of the department and Software modules are generated in – house.
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MP STATE SCHOOL EDUCATION PORTAL
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
The Rajya Siksha Kendra’s education portal has been designed to serve as a common platform for all stakeholders, beneficiaries, administrative departments; officials for all School Education related issues. It facilitates transparency and social audit in all the processes/ functions of the department. Online relational databases of key entities – Schools, Offices, Teachers, Enrollment status, Civil works, Out of School Children, Children with Special Needs etc., help in automating the processes, meshing and analyzing the transaction data. The portal is dynamic in nature; it captures transactions and has proved to be very useful in bringing qualitative and credible information instantly for the decision makers.
JUROR’S EVALUATION
The Rajya Siksha Kendra’s education portal, facilitated by ICT interventions, has automated almost all the all core functions, processes and services related to all the stakeholders. The portal has several role-based online applications. Incorporating all the elements of the State Education Department is not an easy task, and it has been managed successfully taking care of each and every activity related to the whole of education department.
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THE M-GOVERNANCE MANTRA FOR FOREST MANAGEMENT
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
Madhya Pradesh Forest Department has taken many ICT initiatives under its “m-Governance Mantra” project for effective management of forests & wildlife. The Department is using GPS enabled PDAs to capture real time data with geo-spatial details. This data is being used for effective planning, management & implementation of various field operations. Department has also successfully implemented HRD programs for capacity building using Edusat Services of ISRO. The users can access the applications through role-based UserIDs and Passwords. The users of the project also interact through mobile, e-mails, videoconferencing and Net-Meeting. All projects have great potential for replication in other departments and also in States. In fact GoI has already taken a decision to scale up these efforts to national level.
JUROR’S EVALUATION
The ‘m-Governance Mantra for Forest Management’ is an effort towards better and modernized system of forest management with the use of the ICT and detailed software. The main objective of the ICT application in the department is to systematically organize planning implementation and monitoring of forestry and other related operations by systemic Collection, storage and retrieval of MIS and Geospatial data through a computer based communication network. Going digital is the only assured way to improve the delivery of goods and services in Govt. sector .It facilitates transparency, accountability, efficiency and monitoring and also saves time, energy and financial implications.
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SANJOG HELPLINE – Special Mention
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
As a precursor to its leadership efforts in e-Governance implementation, the Government of Orissa commissioned the Integrated, Multilingual Automated and web-based Grievance Redressal System to enable seamless registration of feedback of the citizenry, on-going implementation status and post-implementation impact of the welfare schemes instituted by the govt. It is India’s first grievance registration and redressal system. This SAHAJ-SARAL-SAFAL system provides a forum for the government to be in touch with the scheme beneficiaries. It allows the citizen to register and follow their grievances. The citizens can assess the status of their grievances through a ticket number provided to them. The system has an inbuilt intimation and escalation process. The information updated on the web portal helps maintain a database of grievances registered specific to location, nature of complaint, concerned authority of redressal and its status.
JUROR’S EVALUATION
Almost all Government schemes are citizen centric. It is therefore required for citizens to assess and provide constructive feedback on functioning of the scheme. Particularly disadvantaged are the poor illiterate citizen who is at a loss to know how to approach and whom to approach and get reasonable response. Sanjog helpline ensures a transparent grievance redressal service, for all the schemes in which the citizens are the immediate beneficiaries. Through this service, the citizen is empowered to register any type of complaint without disclosing their identity. Thus with the help of ICTs the common man has been brought into the folds of administration where his opinion matters.
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CAPnic – Special Mention
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
CAPnic (Centralized Allotment Process) has been developed for conducting the counselling process for allotment of seats for professional courses in Kerala by receiving online options from the candidates. The software has been developed with technical support from NIC, Kerala unit. The application has various features such as valuation of answers, rank list preparation and publishing, online option receiving, allotment processing, result publishing, online option rearrangement, re-allotment, better payment mechanism, settlement of fees. All the stake holders involved save time and money.
JUROR’S EVALUATION
Counselling process after common entrance tests is usually an enormous exercise, requiring large human and financial resources. Capnic is a user friendly interface that makes this process simpler. Wide spread internet connectivity in the state of Kerala provides facility for most of the candidates to register their options from their home itself. The candidates can change the priority of their options as many times as they wish, within the stipulated time, consulting their friends and relatives. This helps in avoiding spending of large sums of money and reduces inconvenience for the candidates by eliminating the need to reach counseling centers and back.
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