IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

Speaking as chief guest at the at the launch of Common Service Centre (CSC) with the tagline “Nagaland One-bringing public services closer home” at Indisen village and later at a formal programme at the DC’s conference hall Dimapur Saturday, Tovihoto lauded progress made by the 63 CSCs set up across Nagaland initiated after setting up of Nagaland State e-Governance Society (NSeGC) for implementation of e-Governance.

National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NEILIT) and CSC SPV on Monday signed agreement to offer technology courses through common service centers (CSC) and make one crore people e-literate by 2013-14.

“We will soon achieve the target of one lakh CSCs. Around 98,000 CSCs have been established as of now,” Minister of State for Communications and IT Sachin Pilot told reporters in New Delhi.

Part of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), CSCs aim to provide e-governance services, education and health services on a massive scale.

"We are committed to fully support e-Governance initiatives of Jammu and Kashmir government and Rs 40 crore has been sanctioned for CSC project in the state," Pilot said after the launch of CSCs outreach programme from Ganderbal in Central Kashmir.

The project which is likely to be at a cost of Rs 6 crore, will extend services like grievance redressal, clarifications on government schemes, contact details of government offices and status of applications or petitions seeking services.

It is 3 p.m., and most establishments have downed their shutters for the afternoon. At the Common Services Centre (CSC) at Krishna Nagar though, it is yet another busy day with customers waiting patiently for their turn at the counter.

The CSCs, formulated by the Union government’s Department of Electronics and Information Technology, were set up across the country as part of the National e-Governance Plan under through public-private partnership. The CSCs offer delivery of multiple services under one roof, covering the areas of governance and private services.

The CSCs provide services in the areas of e-governance, education, health, telemedicine, entertainment and private matters through cost effective video, voice and data content.

The services, which are the initiatives of the Department of Information Technology, are both IT-based and non-IT-based. The states are Jharkhand, Haryana, West Bengal, Bihar, Tripura, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh.

About 18,000 Common Service Centres (CSCs) have been set up in the country to provide IT enabled services to the people in the rural areas. These are part of the overall plan of the Government to establish One Lakh CSCs in 600,000 villages. All the CSCs are scheduled to be operational by July next year. Agencies for setting up of service Centres have been selected in most of the cases. The final number of CSCs in the country is likely to be over 1,13,000, well above the initial target.

Talking to The Indian Express, Principal Secretary, Information Technology, Sarvesh Kaushal said: “The project will be implemented very soon. The state designated agency has identified 2,112 centres in the first phase that will be established in rural areas across the state. There will be one CSC for every six villages. The state has been divided into ten zones for the project.”

"The ePCOs will have a full-fledged information system with a PC, a webcam, a broadband link and a printer to provide a host of online services in English and Indian languages," BSNL Karnataka circle chief general manager T.S. Kuppuswamy told reporters at the e-initiative launch by state IT minister Katta Subarmanya Naidu here Monday.

All services that do not require verification of records at the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) headquarters will be delivered from the centres, being set up as part of the e-Calcutta project.

The first e-Calcutta outlet — in Business Tower, at 206 AJC Bose Road — is likely to be commissioned by March, said mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya. Fourteen more are in the pipeline.

The Villages of Khuda Jassu, Dhanas, Kaimbwala, Raipur Kalan, Raipur Khurd, Makhan Majra and Behlana have already been covered under this facility. Gram Sampark Centres in other villages including Dadu Majra, Khuda Alisher, Daria, Maloya and Kishengarh will also have a Gram Sampark Centers soon.

According to the him, over 70 per cent of the rollout has been completed in Assam, Bihar, Cha­ndigarh, Delhi, Goa, Gujarat, Hary-ana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Puducherry, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Tripura and West Bengal. In Orissa and Chhattisgarh, it has crossed the half way mark, Chandrashekhar said just before taking over as secretary, DoT, on Monday.

"The scheme was likely to generate over 400,000 direct jobs opportunities as well as indirect employment avenues of a like number in rural India," Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar told reporters after inaugurating a conference on 'Common Service Centres: The Change Agents'.

Of the one-lakh IT-enabled Common Services Centres (CSCs) that the Government is planning to set up by March 2010, as many as 25195 Centres have already been set up with another 10000 in the pipeline which would become operational by the end of this March. These Centres are being set up across the six-lakh villages in the country at an estimated cost of Rs 5742 crore which would be raised via PPP (Public Private Partnership) mode.

The electoral rolls are updated annually during the ‘summary revision’. Under the present scheme, while the staff attend to claims and objections received during the annual revision exercise, names of those unable to apply get left out of the e-rolls.

SREI Sahaj is a subsidiary of Kolkata-based Srei Infrastructure Finance Ltd and has the mandate of rolling out about 29,000 common service centres (CSCs) across the country.

"Though we have already rolled out 21,000 CSCs, many of them are yet to offer G2C services like issuing birth certificates, land records, etc. Without these services, CSCs can hardly play any role in e-governance as they were supposed to do," SREI Sahaj e-Village Senior Vice-President (Strategic Marketing) Sumanta Pal said.