Manipur is the first state in the country to complete the implementation of four core infrastructural components of national e-governance plan (NeGP), namely, the common services centre(CSC), state  data centre (SDC), the state wide area network (SWAN) and the state service delivery gateway (SSDG). It, however, lags behind most other states in the usage of the created infrastructure. The information was provided by Rita Teaotia, additional secretary (e-governance), department of electronics and information technology (DEITY), government of India on Thursday.

Noting that so far 15 states have operationalised SDCs and SWANs and nine states have operationalised SDCs, SWANs and CSCs, she said, “By the end of 2012, by and large the core components of NeGP would be in place, across the country.”  The focus has now to shift from setting up the infrastructure to its usage and the availability of services to the citizens, she said, while delivering her address, during a state consultative workshop on e-governance, co-organised by NASSCOM, DEITY and Manipur state IT department and IT society (MSITS) in Imphal. 

She urged the states and UTs to prepare annual action plans and set objective targets for realising the vision of the plan. She also requested the states to focus on capacity building initiatives, handholding to various line departments through issuing detailed guidelines and manuals and targeting across-the- counter services. 

While speaking at the workshop, she said that the department would now focus on the availability of services, which would be measured through the number of transactions, quality of service and customer satisfaction. Moreover, she also said that since most of the states are becoming more advanced in IT, now much of the implementation has to go back to the states.

Elaborating on future roadmap, she said that the focus in future would be on resolving the critical issues and gaps in implementation of the four major infrastructure components, promoting and monitoring effective utilisation of the created infrastructure, focusing on services across the counter, and mobile delivery through 166 number. She said that e-district will be scaled to cover additional 100 districts, across the country.

A human resource plan for e-governance, being prepared by a committee headed by UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani, and capacity-building, would be other major focus areas in the near future, she said.

Delivering the keynote address, D S Poonia, Chief Secretary, Government of Manipur said that by August this year the state government would offer online 42 government-to-citizen (G2C) services through the state portal. He also said that the department of information technology would soon be providing specific email IDs to all the state officials, after the complete mapping of the domain names, which was in final stage of implementation.

 Noting some issues in NeGP implementation, he pointed at the “lack of clarity” in funding received from the DEITY and said that it is being done in bits and pieces in a few cases. He pointed out that the IT professionals recruited as part of the State e-Mission Team (SeMT), by the Centre are perceived as outsiders in the state government and that they do not gel in the government set-up.  “This issue could be resolved, if selection is done here locally, with DEITY participating as one of the stakeholders in the recruitment process,” he recommended.
 
Highlighting the challenges faced by the state CSCs, S Birendra Singh, special secretary, DIT, government of Manipur, said that lack of power and connectivity are a few major issues which may scuttle the realisation of the project’s objective. He also appreciated the change in focus of the DEITY towards utilisation of the infrastructure created under NeGP and its assessment which would be based on number of transactions. He said that the young team of state IT department, mostly under 30, is working hard towards successful implementation of all e-governance projects.

The workshop was co-organised by DEITY, Government of India, DIT, Government of Manipur, Manipur State IT Society, in association with NASSCOM. This consultative meet is the 13th in series of 50 workshops being organised in all State Capitals and UTs across India. This is being done to amplify the mission and message of the National e-Governance Plan: "Public Services Closer Home".