The second phase of UID has commenced with gusto in Maharashtra. However, there is a whole web of IT implementations that are linked with UID. Here is an overview of DIT Maharashtra’s smorgasbord of implementations that are benefiting the state’s citizens.
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was established in February 2009 as a part of the Planning Commission and headed by Nandan Nilekani. The UID project has been a landmark project for independent India. Three main pillars were determined for this project—that of identity proof for financial inclusion, identity for marginalized section of society and a basic form of identity that could be authenticated from anywhere. In the state of Maharashtra, which has been called the most innovative state by Nilekani, it all began on 29th September 2010 in the small village of Tembhli. There are many reasons as to why this particular village was chosen. With 97% of the population consisting of Adivasis, it was considered to be an ideal location to commence UID as these people had no identity of any sort whatsoever. Maharashtra even received Aadhar Excellence award for Phase one, and the state was also the leading registrar in the country.
The second phase began with a bang in May 2012 and enrollment numbers have reached 5 crores to date. E-tendering for phase two was done in a record time of eight days in Maharashtra, something that has never happened before. Workshops were taken in full vigor in different places with Tehsildar, Collector, Deputy Collector and Tehsildar. Maharashtra, being a pioneer state in many schemes has launched Aadhaar on social platforms as well. To ensure the success of Aadhaar, an almost perfect storm was created. When it comes to real usage and benefit of Aadhaar, only 10% of weightage is given to UID numbers and 90% to how are these integrated with various services, as that is the only way that this project is going to make a difference. Many pilots have been conducted for Aadhar projects. First such pilot was held in Padga village wherein payments were directed to the bank account through the UID number itself.
Other such pilots presently, are in Public Distribution System (PDS), LPG distribution, fertilizer subsidy. The direct cash subsidy in financial inclusion districts is directly credited to Aadhaar based bank accounts. Basically, UID acts as a Know Your Customer (KYC) for no frills accounts presenting the possibility of opening an account for people who otherwise, would not be able to do so. There are twelve pensions in the social justice department, which will also be credited to Aadhaar-based accounts. In this way, people will not be able to take undue benefits; which is a rampant phenomenon otherwise. This will direct benefits to proper targeted groups in turn, leading to savings of thousands of crores of rupees for the state government. Another project in the pipeline will be on school grants. Thus, for any school to get a grant it will be mandatory to give UID numbers of teachers and students.
To make its working more efficient, the Department of Information and Technology (DIT) Maharashtra has initiated scores of IT implementations and e-Governance standardization marks just the beginning of it.
E-Governance standardization
The idea of e-Governance standardization originated as, in e-Governance one will find islands of software with their own standards and policies. Getting these systems to talk to each other was not possible earlier. E.g. Data collected by PDS and that collected by the health department couldn’t be intermixed or analyzed.
The interoperability of these systems from various departments was becoming necessary in order to deliver a seamless service as it ensures that a proper process is in place. Also, it enables proper answers for questions such as which projects should be taken on priority, what should be sources of funding, what procedures and processes should be followed and how the help of the IT department be taken. Thus, the e-Governance policy came into being.
Maharashtra is the first state to have a dedicated e-Governance policy. The policy aims to maintain and strengthen the leadership of the state in the area of e- Governance, and take it towards m-Governance or mobile-Governance.
The e-Governance policy has been prepared to ensure implementation of various initiatives and interoperability between each of these, and to establish an integrated environment for delivering various government services such as those that are Government to Citizen (G2C), Government to Business (G2B),Government to Government (G2G) and Government to Employees (G2E); in a seamless and cost effective manner.
From a macro perspective, increasing revenues and decreasing spending on non-development works can generate surplus budget. This can lead to a better infrastructure, and consequential benefits. Rajesh Aggarwal, IT Secretary, Maharashtra divides e-Governance projects into five categories namely: inflow and outgo of monies, database deduplication, citizen interface, internal workings of the government and security related areas.
One of the central aspects of this policy is localization of language. Thus, landing page of all eGovernance applications in the State should, by default, open in Marathi. The State shall establish Marathi as first and mandatory language in all e-Governance initiatives across applications and processes, so that the benefits of e-Governance reach all the citizens of the State. To achieve this purpose, DIT has tied up with CDAC.
After the e-governance policy, the next step is to define the e-governance implementation strategy. Under each policy, the action required and the timelines are determined. At present, 0.5% of the budget of every department is allocated to e-governance projects.
All stakeholders are mandatorily required to go through e-Governance training and certification programs (http://egovtraining.maharashtra.gov.in/Site/Home/Index.aspx), which is a unique initiative in its own right. It tests an individual’s skill and knowledge on e-Governance and is mandatory for all DIT Staff, Consultants and Software developers working with Govt. of Maharashtra.
This certification is also strongly recommended for all stakeholders working on e-Governance projects anywhere in India.
Revamping transportation with RFID tags
To give a context to this project, whenever you exit or enter the state of Maharashtra, you have to go through the procedure of paying excise duty at the toll post. With the deployment of RFID tags that are given to each vehicle, whatever materials come in or go out can be checked and scanned at the check post. The transport organization can fill in the details online as well as about the goods that they are carrying and these records are linked to the RFID tagged vehicle. As the vehicle enters the check post, it is detected whether it is carrying the correct goods through RFID scanning.
Apart from that, issues of excess weight can be sorted out along with those pertaining to excise or sales tax. Before this was implemented, details were filled in manually. This was a time consuming process and it could lead to errors. With an RFID tag, the information regarding the vehicle and shipment can be scanned quickly without contact, reducing the time taken at the post to a great extent and also ensuring the accuracy of the information that is captured.
Mobile governance
As enterprises embrace mobility, the notion of mobile governance is gaining currency. This refers to giving enterprises the ability to make, sponsor and enforce the right decisions. For the government of Maharashtra, it plays a multidimensional role, right from creating discipline, extracting data to achieving transparency. To begin with, in Aadhaar, there is no Know your Residence (KYR) data and, through the portal, an opportunity is being given to residents to add data like ration card, PAN card, Passport number etc and to link the same to their Aadhaar.
This information is not captured at the time of registration of the UID. Users can add this information using SMS or through the website. For SMS, they have to send a set of messages to a designated number. The mobile number also has to be registered against UID for this to work.
The list of categories will expand in the future. There is another portal that gives access to policy makers to search data about any user. The data received in UID is put in the State Resident Data Hub (SRDH).
BYOD has penetrated the government as well. A survey application has been developed by State Government, that runs on an Android tablet. There are lots of surveys taking place at any point of time in the government sector.
For example for UID, there are private entities that handle the registration process. Data mismanagement takes place when some of these companies try to make money by fiddling with the data, as they are paid on a per registration basis. To reduce malpractices and ensure that these third-parties comply with the regulations, this application has been developed. There are 30-40 questions in the application and, based on the answers given, it calculates the score of the enrollment agency and determines if it is performing as per guidelines or not.
A lot of hidden issues come out in the open through this. There are some agencies that would not give a receipt to the registrar in the past, for instance. However, the survey application is not limited to enrollment. It is used in the education system as well. There are 93,000 schools and the government needs to verify the number of students. Some schools will take students from a certain standard and, through the backdoor, make them sit in another standard in order to get money. Under the Pat Padtalani project, there is photographic evidence. Moreover, since the photos are geo-tagged, it is ensured that the survey has happened on site and not over the phone. It even captures the signatures.
Monitoring tax returns
The main activity of Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) is to monitor the returns filed by the tax payer and taxes paid as per said returns. Earlier, this task was done manually. The flip side was that the department never used to get timely details about who had filed the returns and who were the defaulters. Identifying the latter was a tedious process, until the latest IT implementations came about. It is vital to do this since Sales Tax contributes 60-70% of the state’s revenues every year. Last year’s collection stood at Rs 56,000 crores. The majority of the department’s revenue comes under the Value Added Tax (VAT) act of Maharashtra. Close to 6.7 lakh dealers are registered under this act. The manual returns were scanned and sent for data entry. Due to manual filing, there was a considerable scope for errors. Without e-filing, data quality was not assured. Initially, e-registration was introduced. Subsequently, e-returns were started and today, Maharashtra is the only state to get 100% returns online. In turn, even taxpayers are satisfied with the savings in time.
Internal functions have been automated through core applications and there is an online portal created for taxpayers. These efforts have ensured transparency in the tax system. Initially, only the returns branch was computerized. Later, the department decided to go in for end-to-end computerization in order to have a holistic solution. In 2001, the department started to develop core applications. For the Sales Tax department, the BORR model was devised, according to which all processes should be outsourced. A large scale training programme was undertaken by CDAC.
The apparent benefit has been a whopping 20% growth in revenue. Today, the department is able to access any dealer’s record. Earlier, the defaulters list used to come, only after two to three months. That time has been reduced to four-five days and timely action can now be taken. All information is now available in electronic form and it can be analyzed. Earlier, raids were conducted on an ad-hoc basis. In addition, bulk mail and bulk SMS have been implemented and, important announcements can be issued to taxpayers en masse, within a short span of time.
There are two units of automation. The first unit is the MahaVikas system, which generates registration certificates that are given to dealers and it is more of actual work automation for the department. The second unit is data mining and business intelligence for the data warehouse. It is a first of its kind project in any Commercial Tax Department in India. The transactional system gives a huge amount of data, that the department manually analyzes and creates cases for audits and investigations. With analytical capabilities, it churns the whole data from Mahavikas and add external agencies such as Central Excise, IT, RTO, Octroi of Mumbai etc. to it. This data will also be available to the department and can be analyzed in detail. Due to this initiative, around 1,100 Havala dealers have been identified so far.
Department of Registration & Stamps
This is among the oldest departments dating back about a hundred years. IT has created something of a revolution in this legacy department. Its main task has been to register and preserve documents, as well as to collect stamp duty and registration fees. Registration involves various steps; however, there are processes that can be automated and computerized. Taking this into consideration, back in 2002, computerized registration was introduced for the first time in the country. However, it was a standalone project.
Finally, in 2011-12, in association with NIC, the department developed the iSarita application for the centralized registration of documents. Presently, there are 464 registrar offices in the state that are connected to the central server. All data and copy of scanned images are saved here. The basic benefit is that all data for the state has been made available at one spot. Policy decisions, which have to be taken by the government, supported by the data, are available immediately. Also, due to this initiative, administrative control over offices has become easier.
As of now, around 80 offices are on the iSarita application. Earlier, data was captured through manual data entry. Presently, two modules have been provided to the public. One, is in association with Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Ltd (MKCL) wherein, a barcode utility has been developed to encapsulate data in a bar code that is handed to the concerned party. It helps save a lot of time during the registration process.
The IGR Maharashtra Web site is where the public data entry application is hosted and, by entering a unique number, the sub-registrar can access the data entered on the site. Today, there is also the option of making e-payments. GRAS, a payment gateway established by the finance department, supports the payment of registration fees online. It is the safest way to transfer funds to the department. Presently, the department is in the process of putting the data collected over the course of the past 28 years on the server.
Maharashtra SDC on the Cloud
Maharashtra Government Cloud is an initiative by DIT, Government of Maharashtra to provide IaaS, PaaS and SaaS Cloud services to various state government departments. The objective of this initiative was to drastically reduce data centre costs while increasing IT capacity with maximum flexibility. This Cloud has been deployed at the State Data Centre, and it is being used extensively by departments for hosting their Web sites and applications. DIT has adopted technologies from Microsoft and VMware for providing the MahaGov Cloud.
While deploying the cloud infrastructure, the hardware at SDC had to be upgraded to achieve higher VM density. To implement Cloud computing and provide computing infrastructure to various departmental applications, 25 high-end servers have been procured. Storage was upgraded from 10 TB to 56 TB of usable capacity.
The Cloud setup of 19 physical servers provides a virtual server infrastructure of 130 servers. There are 65 applications or Web sites of various departments running on the Cloud. The co-location of infrastructure is provided to major projects including e-District, SSDG, MahaOnline and departments such as IGR, MWRD and Labor and Electoral Office.
DIT went in for different Clouds as the state government lacked prior examples of Cloud deployments in the government sector. It wanted to try out two vendors and later decide which cloud to opt for. For now, VMware has been chosen for critical applications. Other apps will be on the Microsoft Cloud. However, on account of some issues regarding scalability with the Microsoft Cloud, the majority of applications are hosted in the VMware Cloud.
To counter the change management issue, as with any new implementation, awareness sessions had to be conducted with the application owners to apprise them of the benefits of the Cloud. They had to be convinced that by virtualizing, each high-end server provides computing infrastructure with six to eight virtual servers, which otherwise would require the same number of physical server—the latter would, of course, have proved to be far more expensive.
Having seen the benefits of virtualization being achieved after the PoC, the next step of moving to complete the Cloud setup was initiated soon. With all of the modules of the Cloud implemented, the stakeholders could realize the value of State Data Centres.
The Cloud infrastructure has surely improved the three major constraints of operation with; better quality of service, reduced time for infrastructure provisioning and lower cost of hosting. There has been a reduction in time for provisioning infrastructure, resources are utilized efficiently and, as and when required. Furthermore, there is reduction in downtime required for maintenance activity along with, ease of management of an infrastructure as huge as the SDC.
The implementation has not been without its learning. Using the feature of thin provisioning of storage and memory, resources have been utilized efficiently and allocated as per requirements and performance. Features like Live Migration have helped the SDC team to manage planned maintenance without any application downtime. Management and monitoring of the Cloud setup is effectively done using the dashboard, alerts and reports generated from the Cloud system.
MahaGov Cloud, is the only Government Cloud Setup in India that is running on a production environment with such a high volume of servers and applications. Maharashtra SDC is the only State DataCentre in India to be a member of APNIC, making it vendor independent for Internet bandwidth. MahaGov cloud also won the Skoch Digital Inclusion Award.
