The forthcoming information technology policy of the Kerala government will have e-services delivery to citizens as the thrust area.
Principal Secretary (Information Technology) P. H. Kurian told a Central team visiting the State to review implementation of e-governance programmes that a futuristic, integrated service delivery framework had been chalked out by the Kerala State IT Mission. It envisaged a single identity for citizens to log in to a State portal to access the services. A detailed, long-term plan is under preparation now in consultation with all departments, focussing on high volume.
He noted that “Kerala pioneered in implementing several e-initiatives of the Government of India and became a role model to many other States by their effective and timely execution.”
The Central team, led by Sathya Narayana, Secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, reviewed the progress of various e-governance initiatives undertaken by the State, particularly the e-district programme and the State Service Delivery Gateway programme. The team held discussions with the chief secretary and other government secretaries on the integrated e-governance delivery services to be rolled out in the State.
An official release said that the team had expressed satisfaction about the progress of various programmes and had explored the possibility of replicating some of the successful e-models of Kerala such as the e-literacy programme, common service centres and e-district programme in other States.
E-district is a State Mission Mode Project under the National e-Governance Plan. It seeks to provide integrated, seamless and online delivery of citizen services at the district-level through automation of work flow, back-end digitisation, integration and process redesign.
This project targeted high volume services delivered at the district-level and to undertake back-end computerisation to enable the delivery of citizen services through Akshaya centres.
The state government has implemented the pilot phase of e-district project in Kannur and Palakad and delivery of 23 revenue certificates have been made online. An estimated eight lakh e-applications have been processed during the pilot run and certificates issued in 80 per cent of the cases. The e-district services are proposed to be rolled out to rest of Kerala in a year’s time.
The State Service Delivery Gateway project was formulated under the National E-governance Plan to fulfil the vision of integrating all services across departments and provide the same through common service centres and State portals.
