Creating Transformational eGovernance Systems
“If you are only automating the existing government systems, then you are not achieving much. The focus should be on doing transformational things,” says Dr. Ajay Kumar, Director General, National Informatics Centre (NIC); Joint Secretary, Department of Electronics & Information Technology.
NIC is the country’s foremost body for execution of eGovernance projects. What kind of contributions is NIC making in the Digital India initiative?
During the last three months many key projects under Digital India have been executed by NIC. MyGov, which is a prestigious and unique project, for fostering partnership between citizens and the government, has been spearheaded by NIC. Today the project has more than 4 lakh active users; it is serving the purpose of encouraging citizen participation towards good governance. People can share their ideas in the form of text, pictures, audio and video and these can then serve as a vehicle for improving the various policies, programmes, schemes, etc. It is a matter of pride for us that NIC has launched MyGov in just 3 to 4 months.
A biometric attendance system has been launched by the NIC. What are the main advantages of this system?
We started this project in last week of August and it is already operational in more than 150 government departments in Delhi. In a matter of little over a month, NIC was able to develop the applications, procure the devices and have them installed. All the employees were enrolled and the training was imparted and the system became operational from 1st October. Anyone can log on at http://attendance.gov.in/ to have a broad picture of the time at which the employees are arriving at office and the total number of employees that are present or absent. For having the specific data about who is present and who is absent, the person must have the valid user ID and password. Currently we are working with a plan for enabling all central government offices to have this system of attendance by December 2014.
Is this biometric attendance system scalable? How difficult is it to add new departments to the system? Also what is the cost of implementing this system?
The beauty of this biometric attendance system is that it is highly scalable. In the phase 2 of this programme, we plan to offer the platform to the people who can themselves procure the device. As this is a cloud based solution you can keep on adding new departments, organisations, etc., into the system. Any organisation can join in just 2 hours of time. If you want to give attendance, all you need to do is put your finger on the device. In case, someone has a fingerprint challenge, he or she can give attendance through iris scan. The tablet device that we are using costs about Rs. 10000 to 12000, and the finger print scanner costs only Rs. 2000.
NIC has been responsible for the creation of the Jeevan Pramaan project – digital life certificate for pensioners. Please tell us about this project?
The Jeevan Pramaan is the third major project that NIC has launched in record time. This Aaadhar-based Digital Life Certificate for pensioners could eventually benefit over a crore pensioners. All pensioners are required to give a life certificate every year. If you don’t give your life certificate on time, your pension can stop. So under the existing system, the pensioner has to go to the bank or the pension disbursement authority to give the proof of life. The proposed digital certification will do away with the requirement of a pensioner having to submit physical life certificate every year. It has a system that works though a combination of a biometric device and a software application. Key details of the pensioner, including date, time, and biometric information will be uploaded to a central database on real-time basis, ultimately enabling the Pension Disbursing Agency to access a Digital Life Certificate. This will conclusively establish that the pensioner was alive at the time of the authentication.
NIC has started a portal through which greetings created by ordinary Indians can be sent. How did you come up with idea for providing such a service to the citizens?
The idea for starting the e-greetings portal came to us on the Independence Day, when the Prime Minister said that we should send online greetings in order save nature and money. The objective of the portal is to promote a contemporary and eco-friendly method of sending Greetings. The portal allows users to select and send a greeting from several templates available for an occasion. The greeting cards that are available on the website are sourced from MyGov portal.
The projects that you have spoken about are quite transformational in nature. Does this prove the point that now we have moved beyond the stage where we were just automating procedures in the name of eGovernance?
Absolutely. In eGovernance, if you are only automating the existing government systems, then you are not achieving much. The main focus should be on doing transformational things. For instance, Jeevan Pramaan is totally transformational. If we had a system where the pensioner has to get a certificate attested by a government servant and scan it and upload it, then that would have been mere automation. But we are using the pensioner’s biometrics to prove his identity and confirm to the bank or the pension disbursement authority that the man is alive today.
