E-Governance: 24/12/09

STATE PLANS TO MODERNISE EMPLOYMENT EXCHANGES
Kolkata, Bhubaneswar
Business Standard

With a view to streamline the functioning of the employment exchanges in the state, the Orissa government has chalked out plans to upgrade and modernise them.

A separate portal will be set up which will have facilities for registration of job seekers both locally and nationally. While the local registration will be useful for employment inside the state, the national registration will help the candidates to seek job outside the state, sources said.

“ We intend to modernise all the 80 employment exchanges in the state with an expenditure of Rs 60 crore. The work is proposed to be completed in next five years”, Jagar Singh, secretary, labour and employment department of Orissa government said. The modernisation and upgradation work will be taken up under public-private-partnership (PPP). While the Centre would provide 75 percent of the proposed cost, the remaining 25 percent would be provided by the state government.

 

 

ONLINE PROVIDENT FUND CLAIM SETTLEMENT BY 2011
Srikumar Bondyopadhyay, Calcutta
The Telegraph

Provident fund subscribers may be able to access their accounts and push for an online settlement of claims by 2011.

The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) is aiming to create an inter-connected online platform for its 117 regional and sub-regional offices that will eventually allow online settlement of claims within a day or two.

The EPFO is one of the last bastions of bureaucratic outfits that is being sucked into the online platform managed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC).

P. Sudhakar Babu, additional central PF commissioner, said a trial run was being carried out at five centres: Karnal, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mangalore and Nasik.

“Another 15 centres will be networked by the end of this month. We are aiming to bring all our centres onto the online platform in 2010,” Babu said here today while addressing a seminar organised by the Social Security Association of India.

Once all the regional and sub-regional provident fund offices are connected, EPFO members will be able to get their claims settled overnight. They will also be able to access other information such as the account balance.

 

BPSC TO GO ONLINE SOON
Sanjeev Kumar Verma, Patna
The Times of India

Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) would soon have a fully-computerised system in place. The information technology (IT) department has taken up a scheme in this regard, the request for which was made earlier by the commission. BPSC conducts competitive examinations for premier state government services, including Bihar Administrative Service, Bihar Police Service and Bihar Financial Service.

 

 

PROPERTY REGISTRATION TO GO DIGITAL TO CURB FRAUD
D Suresh Kumar, Chennai
The Times of India (Chennai edition)

In a move aimed at curbing fraudulent and benami property transactions, the Tamil Nadu Registration Department is all set to introduce biometric fingerprinting and digital photographing for registering documents at all its 573 sub-registrar offices.

The technology-enabled system, for which the Registration Act has been amended, is expected to be implemented from February next year. This would replace the existing three-year old practice of manually affixing passport-sized photographs and inked left hand thumb impressions of property vendors and buyers on the second page of registered property documents.

“We have placed orders with Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT) for acquiring 1,200 biometric finger print devices and an equal number of digital cameras, which would be installed at the subregistrar offices (two devices of each in every office) for which the state government has sanctioned Rs 55 lakh. Once the equipment is in place, every property seller and buyer will be digitally photographed and their left hand thumb impressions will be recorded on the biometric device against their photographs. The procedure will be over in less than 5 minutes, unlike the present system which takes time,” R Sivakumar, inspector-general of registration (Tamil Nadu) told The Times of India on Wednesday.

 

HIGH-POWERED PANEL FORMED FOR UNIQUE IDENTIFICATION PROJECT
Kohima
The Economic Times

To facilitate successful implementation of unique identification numbers in Nagaland, a 17-member state empowered committee has been constituted under chairmanship of Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio.

According to an official notification issued here yesterday the state home commissioner will act as the secretary to the empowered committee.

In order to assist the empowered panel in implementing the project, a 12-member state-level implementation committee under the chairmanship of the chief secretary Lalthara was also constituted, the notification said.

The Centre through the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is embarking on the ambitious project.

 

E-Governance News: 23/12/09

KERALA COMMERCIAL TAXES DEPT TO ADOPT M-GOVERNANCE
Thiruvananthapuram
The Hindu Business Line

The State Finance Minister, Dr Thomas Isaac, has said that the Commercial Taxes Department would launch an M-Governance initiative for grievances redressal.

Speaking at a workshop on Goods and Services Tax (GST) that also included pre-Budget confabulations with trade and industry here on Tuesday, the Finance Minister said the initiative would be launched on January 11.

This would basically be an interactive voice response system (IVRS) in which an aggrieved trader or assessee can dial a toll-free number and register a complaint on his cell phone from anywhere/anytime in the State.

The complaint can be made in English, Malayalam, Tamil or Hindi. On giving the caller's address and other coordinates, the system would recite back the recorded complaint in the caller's own voice.

Once this is through, a docket number would be messaged to the complainant, which would need to be messaged back to the toll-free number.

A 24/7 monitoring cell at a department call centre would make a transcript of the complaint, and forward it to the concerned Deputy Commissioner for action.

The complaint and the action taken report would be made available online to officials in the department and even the Finance Minister himself.

The details would be uploaded to the Web site of the department where it can be tracked by the public for reference and guidance.

MobME, a player in mobile media and the entertainment platforms based in Technopark here, is implementing the M-Governance initiative on behalf of IT-Kerala.

According to Lishoy Bhaskar, Director (Operations), MobME, a 24/7 monitoring team will transcript the complaints and assign them to the authorities.

The complainant will receive SMS and voice alerts regarding the status of the complaint. Authorities will receive SMS and Voice Alerts whenever a complaint is assigned to them.

The Commissioner, Commercial Taxes; the Taxes Secretary; and the Finance Minister will have access to real-time statistics. Daily, weekly and monthly reports will be made available to these authorities.

A fully transparent system, it is designed to measure efficiency and increase performance levels, Bhaskar said.

The 10-digit toll-free number is being assigned in consultations with the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and is likely to be prefixed as ‘24365.'

Meanwhile, the Finance Minister has reiterated that the Commercial Taxes Department would continue with the inspection of the traders' premises for suspected misappropriation of accounts in the context of slippage in tax revenue realisation. Dr Isaac said that ‘local purchases' in the books of accounts had tended to head abnormally north but have not been matched by ‘sales.'

 

KEYCHAIN AVATAR FOR THE SMARTCARD
New Delhi
The Pioneer

For the convenience of commuters who use Metro's smartcard everyday, Delhi Metro has launched a new generation of smartcards in the form of keychains on Tuesday. The sleek, new 'smart keychains' can be used in the same way as normal smartcards to enter and exit Metro stations, that is by swiping at the designated space on the automatic fare collection gates.

The decision to introduce smart key chains was taken as many Metro commuters use cars, two-wheelers or bicycles and normally use key chains which they can now replace with the new devices. While the Metro smartcards are of the size of credit cards so that they can be kept in wallets, the smart keychains are much smaller, 55 mm in length, 27 mm breadth and 3 mm thick, so they can be carried in pockets. The corners are rounded and the sides tapered. They are made with high-quality plastic and are coated with acrylic resin to make them unbreakable.

 

GOVT PLANS MOBILE PHONE ROUTE TO REACH BASIC FINANCIAL SERVICES
Subrahmanyan Viswanath, Bangalore
Deccan Herald

In a major initiative, as part of its e-governance programme, the Centre, plans to extend its e-inclusion envelope to reach basic financial services using mobile phones.

According to Department of Information Technology (DIT) sources with country’s rural population and disadvantageous sections taking to mobile in a big way, a “delivery mechanism that enables provision of basic financial services on individual’s mobile,” be seriously explored.

It was observed that though a large section of rural population has access to mobile telephony, they do not have a similar facility to financial services through banks. With rural mobile subscriber base expected to leapfrog in the near future, reaching out to “unbanked” population of the country through mobiles could be the way forward for financial inclusion. It is planned to leverage the existing infrastructure established and operationalised by telecom service providers across the country for airtime payments for this major national mission purpose.

Besides evolving a framework for delivering financial services over mobiles, the Centre, sources said, is addressing issues such as types of transactions that could be allowed; quantum of financial limits; types of guarantee to be offered by airtime vendors; eligibility of agencies involved; role, responsibility and accountability of telecom service providers; regulatory issues to ensure accountability, auditability and traceability of money transfers; safety of deposits among others.

Addressing these gamut of issues, an Inter Ministerial Group, under Chairmanship of DIT Secretary, has agreed that initial basic goals of financial delivery would include ability to deposit money in an account, transfer from one subscriber to another and cash-in and cash-out deposits at convenient locations.

The IMG also debated on Know Your Customer norms, authentication mechanisms, customer protection, money laundering, while noting that mobile operators can provide financial services delivery mechanism along with an intermediary to remote and rural areas. Sources said the IMG also noted that Unique ID infrastructure, once in place, would be key element in basic financial service delivery model.

The IMG is scheduled to meet on December 24, 2009, to delineate the role of each key player as also intermediaries to roll out the programme on priority basis.

The IMG is expected to come up with broad framework in the next two months. The idea is to make use of the technology opportunity, model to arrive at and get clarity to enable people without bank account do necessary financial transaction. IMG comprises of representatives from Department of Financial Services, Posts, Rural Development, Planning Commission, Unique Identification Authority of India, TRAI, RBI, DoT and Home Ministry.

 

E-Governance News: 22/12/09

GOVT RESUMES TALKS WITH WORLD BANK ON E-BHARAT
New Delhi
The Hindu Business Line

Signalling the end of a deadlock, the Department of IT (DIT) has restarted discussions with the World Bank to work on a revised framework and modalities for the operationalisation of e-governance support project ‘e-Bharat'.

Sources said that initial discussions on e-Bharat could not reach a firm conclusion as the World Bank had put certain conditions with regard to the management of the project.

E-Bharat objectives are the same as those of National eGovernance Plan, albeit at a smaller scale. The project is expected to contribute to improving government effectiveness, empowering marginalised communities, increasing fiscal revenue, reducing public procurement costs and promoting private sector led growth through Public Private Partnership (PPP).

Sources said that although discussion had been held even earlier for a possible assistance of $300 million, the two sides could not agree on the framework for implementation as the World Bank purportedly was insisting on certain conditions to manage the project. For instance, against a hands-on project management approach being favoured by the World Bank, the DIT was pushing for a programme mode where assistance could be linked to targets or milestones.

“The differences are now resolved. There have also been some rounds of discussions on the new framework,” sources pointed out.

E-Bharat was aimed at supporting DIT in programme management and also specific support to certain projects (commercial taxes and PDS) by States such as Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

In fact, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT, in its latest report last week noted, that e-Bharat project was “in trouble”. It recommended that the issue should be “pursued with World Bank” so that the project is implemented with the financial support given by World Bank, keeping in view the significant efforts including sizeable resource put in by DIT and other Ministries and participating States for the timely completion of the project preparation activities.

MID-MKT IT FIRMS GET A PLATFORM TO TAP BIZ
Chennai/Bangalore
Business Standard

The Indian and German government have agreed to promote a new bilateral technical cooperation initiative to support the introduction of high quality eGovernance and eBusiness services in the IT-SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) sector.

The project “Economic Development though eGovernance” is jointly promoted by the Directorate for Standardisation, Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) of the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT) and GTZ.

The objective of this project is to improve the competitiveness of IT-SMEs through the use of eGovernance, eBusiness and ICT services. This, in turn, shall lead to increased quality and business opportunities and, as a desired impact, to the creation of income and employment opportunities in the sector.

According to a statement, IT SMEs can get connected to IT majors for outsourcing opportunities, increase the competitiveness of their company through knowledge and skill upgrade and educate themselves about legal framework beneficial to IT SMEs.

“This initiative will also enable the firm to educate themselves on the business orientation and management skills, share the new technologies used globally |and gain credibility through certifications and revenue through business connection with eGov projects,” the statement added.

 

E-FILING OF RETURNS FROM JANUARY
Kolkata/Bhubaneswar
Business Standard

The Orissa government will introduce the e-filing of returns and e-challan for the dealers in the state starting from 1 January, 2010. The finance minister Prafulla Chandra Ghadai has approved a proposal in this regard. Initially, this will be launched as a pilot project using the portal of the State Bank of India (SBI) and the system is proposed to be expanded to all the areas of the state later, Ghadai told the media.

Sources said, the Commercial Tax department and the directorate of treasuries and inspection are in the process of developing separate portals to facilitate e-payment of taxes and e-challan. Once the process is completed, it will be possible for traders and other people to pay different taxes and government fees routed through the treasuries through these portals. It may be noted, the directorate of treasuries and inspection is working on a plan to issue ‘electronic receipt’ for government taxes and fees.

The Computer Maintenance Corporation Ltd (CMC), the software developer for Orissa Treasury Management System (OTMS), has already been roped in to execute the project. Under the proposed system, there will not be any restriction on access and effort will be made to make the system as simple as possible. The new system will enable the dealers to file the return and pay the tax from their own offices.

Stating that out of 1,24,906 dealers in the state, only 47 percent of the dealers are filing return, he said, 53 percent dealers are defaulters. Keeping that in view, the month of ‘November’ was observed as the month of registration for dealers.

MP WINS E-GOVERNANCE MANTHAN AWARD-2009
Bhopal
The Pioneer

Madhya Pradesh has won South Asia’s prestigious E-Governance Manthan Award — 2009 for effective public service deliveries through innovative IT applications. The award has been instituted by the Digital Empowerment Foundation, New Delhi. Union Minister of State for IT, Sachin Pilot presented the awards at New Delhi.

 

E-Governance News: 21/12/09

CONTRACTORS TO BE MONITORED ONLINE
Chennai/Bangalore, December 21, 2009
Business Standard

Contractors slipping on deadlines in completing construction work accorded by the Greater Bangalore City Corporation (GBCC), the city corporation, can now easily be detected, thanks to the civic service provider’s initiative in rolling out a web-based project monitoring system.

As part of its IT initiatives in ramping up quantity and quality of services, GBCC has deployed WBPMS to ensure real time monitoring of progress of work at remote construction sites, GBCC commissioner Bharat Lal Meena said. This would help provide proactive alerts by detecting any slippages early and thereby help applying mid-course correction.

The progress of work at these sites can be independently uploaded to the website by the contractor and the inspection agency stationed there, he said. The central monitoring cell can instantly access this data from the website and take appropriate action to minimise time and cost overruns. 

UIDS LIKELY FOR SCHOOLCHILDREN
Subrahmanyan Viswanath, Bangalore, December 21, 2009
Deccan Herald

School admission across the country may not be the same again from 2011. It may be impossible without the Unique ID (UID) if the Centre accepts a proposal of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).

The UIDAI, chaired by Nandan M Nilekani and his second-in-command Director General Ram Sewak Sharma, has stressed the need for making it mandatory for children to have the UID at the time of admission to school once the process of issuing the UID gets under way.

The rationale behind the proposal is that children can be tracked for academic progress besides being targeted for direct benefits. 

FROM JULY ’10, PASSPORTS MAY’VE E-CHIP
Prafulla Marpakwar, Mumbai, December 21, 2009
The Times of India (Kolkata edition)

After a prolonged delay of more than a year, the Central Passport Organisation (CPO) has drafted an ambitious plan to issue electronic passports from next year, preferably from July 1, 2010.

“In June 2008, we delivered the first electronic passport to President Pratibha Patil and the second to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. At that time, we had promised to issue electronic passports to the public within a year, by July 2009. But due to technical problems, the project was delayed. Now, we are in a position to issue e-passports by July 1, 2010,’’ a senior passport official said. 

STATE CONSUMER FORUMS GET TECH TOUCH
Shalabh, December 21, 2009
The Times of India (Mumbai edition)

Consumer rights in the state are set to get more teeth, thanks to technology. Consumer forum centres across Maharashtra will soon be connected to the State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, located at Hazarimal Somani Marg, via internet. The upgraded infrastructure will help bring down the number of cases pending before consumer forums in the state.

The additional circuit benches of the state commission at Aurangabad and Nagpur and 40 district forums in Maharashtra will be equipped with sophisticated interactive telecommunication technology in the coming few weeks, allowing two-way communication between two centres. The pan-Maharashtra reach of state commission members at the click of a mouse is being achieved for as less as Rs 50,000.

“Confonet (Computerisation and Consumer Networking of Consumer Forums) is my top priority. We will also introduce video conferencing facility on a trial basis at some centres,” said Justice S B Mhase, president of the state forum. A set comprising a webcam and high-end headphone is being bought for each centre in the state. “I will regularly hold review meetings with the presidents and judicial members of the consumer forums to keep number of pending cases under control,” added Mhase.