14 departments offer no seva on Karnataka government portal

No takers

All is not well with Karnataka’s flagship Seva Sindhu platform.

Launched in 2018 as a one-stop-shop for citizens to avail government services online, many departments are faring poorly on it and over a dozen of them have had zero transactions till date.

The Seva Sindhu was a key step the government took towards delivering services in a ‘faceless, cashless, paperless’ ecosystem to prevent citizens from running pillar-to-post and cut corruption. At present, 451 services from 47 departments are available on Seva Sindhu at the click of a button.

According to data made public by the government, 14 service providers have not issued a single citizen service on Seva Sindhu. The service usage in 17 other departments is in single digits. This includes most of the state’s public universities.

“We’re aware of this issue,” Additional Chief Secretary (e-Governance) Rajeev Chawla told DH. “Many departments for whom we built the platform, and they consented to offer services on it, are still using their manual or old IT systems,” he said.

Chawla stressed that all 451 services on Seva Sindhu are those the respective departments had agreed upon.

Chief Secretary TM Vijay Bhaskar, who is pushing the motto of ‘Sarkari Seve - Mane Bagilige’ (government service - at the doorsteps), has convened a meeting on Wednesday with senior officials to review this.

“All departments were supposed to have issued a government order saying their services should be offered online, through the Seva Sindhu portal,” Chawla said. “Any new system will take time. I’m sure that in the next 4-5 months, everything will be
sorted out.”

Last November, the Seva Sindhu won the Digital Transformation Award instituted by publishing platform Governance Now. In his upcoming budget, Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa is likely to announce that Seva Sindhu will be scaled up.

“Currently, Seva Sindhu is optimised for a citizen to apply for services on his own. But we understand that those who are not tech-literate will need assistance. So, we’re planning to have integrated citizen service centres for villages,” an official said. “These centres will help citizens apply for Seva Sindhu services.”

According to Seva Sindhu project director Varaprasad Reddy, the government’s target is to have 500 services on the platform before the end of the 2019-20 fiscal.

Till date, 42.35 lakh services have been availed on Seva Sindhu, with the Health & Family Welfare department alone clocking 30.99 lakh hits.