Govt moots mentors for e-district roll out

Suggests setting up of State SPVs

These mentors, according to Department of Information Technology Director Abhishek Singh, who would  be retired secretaries or chief secretaries of the concerned states, would provide help in implementation of the project thereby facilitating smooth roll out of the various services.

Besides a special purpose vehicle, the states will also establish a district e-governance society to oversee the implementation at the district level.

The e-district project, being ushered in as part of the National e-Governance Plan, Singh said, will be taken up in two phases, and deliver web enabled services to the citizens through the common services centres.

The e-district project, to be implemented in all the states and Union Territories of the country across all the 640 district, will see costs shared between the Centre and the states in the ratio of 75:25, he said, adding with the funding of the states’ share met through additional central assistance.

Under phase 1, those districts where atleast 70 per cent of customer service centres are operational will be covered, with the balance districts taken up in the second phase.  The entire project across the country would be implemented over a timeframe of four years which would also include two years of operation and maintenance.

Under the e-district project, five mandatory category of services would be taken up across all the states. These would include issue of certificates such as domicile, nationality, caste, marriage, income, employment, birth/death etc., Entrollment and disbursal of benefits under various social welfare schemes, pensions, revenue court services, ration card services and TRI services including redressal of grievances.

5 categories of services

The states must further choose five more categories of services such as utility services, collection of taxes and dues, employment services, license and grievance redressal. In order to enable electronic delivery of these services, he said, the states need to issue necessary government orders and notifications as also define a cut-off date for stopping manual services.

Further, it has been suggested that the e-district application use the mobile service delivery gateway not just for the purpose of status tracking but also for other purposes like submission of application, receipt of service as well.

These decisions were taken up at the consultative meeting on the national rool out of the e-district held under the chairmanship of DIT Additional Secretary recently.