Technology is truly one of the pillars that enables good governance. Rajesh Aggarwal, IT Secretary, Maharashtra highlights UID and the entire journey, along with other IT implementations that are acting as a major catalyst for change when it comes to governance.
According to Nandan Nilekani, Maharashtra is the most innovative state. What do you think is the reason behind it?
Aggarwal: Going by enrollment by state government itself , we are the leading state. Maharashtra was always more experimental. E.g. in setting up of State Resident Data Hub ( SRDH). There were three pilot states for it, but Maharashtra was the only one that actually implemented it. It is running out of the State Data Centre. At the moment there is data of more than 3 crore people with entire demographic details. A decision was taken to not store biometric data in Mumbai, but rather in central servers in Bangalore. Self-seeding is another innovation that came from Maharashtra, wherein through registered mobile number one can feed in the information in the system. In Maharashtra, if a UID number is known, but bank account is not known, but the account is linked to the UID then just by that knowledge money can be deposited in that account. It was first done with Bank of India and then with multiple banks.
A lot of data is collected through UID. In case of a data breach, there will be huge repercussions. What is your view on the same?
Aggarwal: Biometric data is much more valuable to the citizen. That was the reason to take a conscious decision of keeping biometric data in central servers and going for online authentication. We are very careful with demographic data as well. We are trying to do server and server authentication and only then pass on the data. But lot of data is such that it is already in public domain.
How is Maharashtra government utilizing its State IT budget?
Aggarwal: We have around Rs.1.2 lac crore budget internally per annum in the state, out of which Rs. 80,000 crore comes from various taxes. Then other contribution is from excise, transport etc. These 4-5 major contribute to almost 90% and these are really well computerized. Presently, sales tax is completely e-filing. It comes through net banking, which is adding about Rs. 200 crore per annum. On spending side, Rs. 35,000 crore goes on salary and Rs.12,000 crore on pension and so many other schemes. We are trying to link UID to private accounts including private aided schools.
Another kind of IT projects are department projects. E.g. computerization of check post, CCTV project etc. Then there are citizen centric projects. There are 7-8,000 CSC (Citizen Service Centres) with 16 lac transactions happening there. This is on village level. Presently, Mahaonline is running 25,000 Village eSangram Kendra. Citizens do not have to step out of their village. One can submit application there and pay facilitation charge of Rs.20 and avail service.
Which would you rate as the most innovative projects?
Aggarwal: There are three major uses of UID. First is de-duplication of databases. In Aurangabad, there were 18,000 beneficiaries of old-age pension scheme. It was decided that without a UID number they would not be given their pensions. Only 13,000 enrolled themselves. The other 5,000 were actually non-existent. Basically, it is removing duplicates of fake identities. This is a very rampant problem whether it is in social justice or students claiming mid-day meals wherein school teachers or management may have inflated the numbers falsely.
Second is in financial inclusion projects. We did it in Colaba Machimaar area wherein UID enrollment centre was opened and BOI also opened their counter. It was decided that those people had to show their UID registration slip and a ‘no-frills’ account would be opened. Banks have started accepting UID as a proof of identity. Third is pushing money into these bank accounts.
How do you manage the change management issue during any IT implementation?
Aggarwal: There is never any resistance to any good project either by people or by staff. Citizens from remotest area are acquainted with technology. The only constraint presently seems to be that we do not have too many machines on the field. More and more things are web based in today’s time.
We are going to be using eOffice wherein security will be more paramount as we will be using digital signatures. We have also started using active directory concepts in our offices. Till now, we were using web-based applications wherein security was not such a big concern because actual transactions were not happening.
During the recent Mantralaya fire how did DIT help in getting the entire machinery back on track?
Aggarwal: Employees’ existing printers, personal computers got burnt. There was a fast replacement of the same. The LAN had got burnt entirely so that also had to be established entirely new. We have a file tracking system which was very helpful to all departments in knowing which files got burnt and also broadly where the file was located on that particular day. It is estimated that Mantralaya might have 6 to 9 crore papers. Around 2 to 3 crore had been scanned by that time. These were immediately made available to all departments. Now the recent initiative is to move to eOffice using NIC software. It will entirely change the way we work.