“Things will change once government services are rolled out and the CSCs start earning revenues”

The state is set to witness a sea change in the way that government services are delivered. From land records to domicile certificates, documents will be available online and the endless queues outside government offices will start to vanish. Jiwesh Nandan, Secretary IT & Electronics of Uttar Pradesh talked about the state’s IT vision with Pupul Dutta

Please tell us about UP’s role in the central government’s capacity building plan and the current status of various e-governance initiatives?
Meetings are being held in the state capital of Lucknow with all of the stakeholders including ministers, principal secretaries and deputies who are involved in various Mission Mode Projects (MMPs). We have done 17 workshops in a day in every commissionary where all the district magistrates were called and sensitized to the importance of e-governance.

The last leg of training, which will be at the district level, is going to start from July 9 to 22, covering all 75 districts, where every district will feel the presence of at least one officer who will brief officials about what is happening under the government’s NeGP module.

UP has about 9,000 CSCs in place and 26 services would be rolled out at each of these. In the current scenario, we have all the hardware and software, but the staff are untrained. We are now identifying some additional services, which would be included in the plan. It’s an ongoing process where the government needs to continue building capacity.

Could you name a few of the services that are being or will be offered by the CSCs in UP?
Currently, in Uttar Pradesh, we have identified six districts on a pilot basis where the following services are being offered. In the revenue department, from the district collector’s office to the tehsils, we are rolling out four services namely income certificate, age and domicile certificates and khatouli, which is digitization of land records.

Under social welfare, the processing of different types of pensions and their applications is being done by the CSCs. Ration cards too can be applied from here.

As of date, a total of 22 services are being offered in these six districts and, from August 1, we will roll out all these services at the CSCs in the remaining 69 districts.

It is widely believed that CSCs have become nothing more than photocopy centers. UP being a rural hinterland, are these centers thriving?
CSCs are a local hub for a group of six villages, which we are trying to franchise through the Service Center Agencies (SCAs). Originally, these CSCs were poised to become the hub for delivering government services under the e-governance plan. It is true that most of them are computer and photocopy centers but they were created with a different intention. All this will change slightly once the government services are rolled out and the centers start earning revenues, which they aren’t currently doing. Once that happens, CSCs will be offering both G2C as well as B2C services. CSCs are private enterprises and need to be run as a business by a local village entrepreneur. Since, government services have not yet been rolled out, in order to sustain themselves, CSCs offer cyber cafe-like facilities at present.

What is being done to make CSC entrepreneurship more profitable?
We are not even thinking of making it profitable at this point of time. However, for every transaction, we charge Rs 10, which is to be shared between the village level entrepreneur and the SCA. As we broaden the offerings of government services, the revenue of these entrepreneurs will also increase. They would earn revenue from these streams and, thereby, becoming financially viable. This is the objective of the state government for all of the CSCs in UP. In the present scenario, the problem is that there are no government services at all in 69 districts and, hence, they are not profitable or financially viable.

What is the state of broadband penetration in Uttar Pradesh?
There are two situations when we talk about broadband availability. One is with it being available to the common man and the other with broadband being available through a closed user group to a government department. Broadband connectivity is already available to people in government departments. However, the point here is whether it is available to people. The Optical Fiber Plan of the central government is yet to take off and we can expect some changes in the state and elsewhere only after that.

What is the IT vision of the state for the next two years?
As far as future is concerned, in next two years, we will have a minimum of two government services fully online. Once it reaches the CSCs, it will automatically reach the households. Secondly, across the counter delivery or single window delivery of many services will happen shortly. It is expected that the existing data base with the government can be used for handing over various certificates or documents to people within minutes.

Uttar Pradesh, so far, is the leader in the country as far as government services are concerned given the 37 lakh transactions that we have delivered already.