Maran unveils e-Governance Plan

By agencies   |   Thursday, 15 June 2006, 19:30 IST
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NEW DELHI: Unveling components of the ambitious National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), Minister for Communications and IT, Dayanidhi Maran took a step closer to make government srevices more accessible to the Indian citizens. The plan convers 26 Mission Mode Projects and eight support components will be implemented in the Central, State and Local Government levels to a tune of Rs 23,000 crore ($5.75 billion) over the next five years. The core infrastructure, support and technical assistance would cost Rs 10,000 crore ($2.5 billion) and the mission mode at an approximation of Rs 13,000 crore ($3.25 billion). While the Cabinet Secretary chairs the apex committee, to oversee implementation and provide policy and strategic directions, another body seriviced by the Department of IT and chaired by the Prime Minister is being set-up to give a fillip to the implementation of NeGP, said Maran. The Mission Mode Projects (MMP) would comprise services around, road transport, land records, commercial taxes, employment exchanges, agriculture, civil supplies, treasuries, land registration, police and education at the State Level. The Central Level will cover insurance, Central Excise, National ID, pensions, e-Posts, banking, visa and income tax. Three infrastructure pillars would support the services to facilitate “Web-based anytime, anywhere access”, which would include 100,000 common service centres in six lakh villages towards the end of 2007. They would act as physical access points for integrated delivery of all the services, stated Maran. Currently 20 states are implementing the State Wide Area Networks, National Data Bank and State Data Centres. The funding for the NeGP components would be done through Plan and non-Plan budgetary provisions of the respective State and Central Government departments, said Maran. “Some projects are also being implemented on a self-financing model through levy of service fee adopting Publi-Private Partnership (PPP) model, but this will not be priced exorbitantly,” he said. Maran also stated that the Central and State governments are already spebding about Rs 3000 crore ($750 million) per annum on e-Governance services. The idea is to integrate these services onto a single platform, he said. The departments are free to choose Open Source or any other software. Maran also stated that, “NIC will work with departments to ensure that the standards are common across all these departments so the services can be integrated on a common network.” The NeGP would involve 500 implementation agencies, 2 lakh sites and an estimated 70,000 man-years of effort. MMP’s such as Land records, transport, registration, MCA-21, Income Tax, central excise, and common services centre would roll-out in a time-span of 6 to 12 months, while the other services will be implemented progressively, Maran stated.