PROJECT OF IT ON E

GOVERNANCE IN BIHAR

SUBMITTED BY:-
PRASHANT MISHRA(19)
SACHIN KATVE (22)
Digital economy:

 A digital economy is an economy that is based on electronic goods and

services produced by an electronic business and traded through electronic
commerce. That is, a business with electronic production and
management processes and that interacts with its partners and customers
and conducts transactions through Internet and Web technologies.

Digital divide:

 The digital divide refers to the gap between people with effective access

to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no
access at all. It includes the imbalance both in physical access
to technology and the resources and skills needed to effectively
participate as a digital citizen. divide reflects the access of various social
groupings to information and knowledge, typically gender, income, race,
and by location.

OVERVIEW OF JANKARI PROJECT – WINNING PROJECT

The Jankari call centre project is the first of its kind IVR-based RTI tool in
the country
Patna: The Government of Bihar's IVR based RTI tool Jankari has baged the
National e-Governance Award for year 2008-09.
 
According to the state Principal Secretary (IT) C K Misra, the project has been
awarded the gold award for 2008-09 for outstanding performance in citizen
centric service delivery.

The Jankari Call Centre project is the first of its kind RTI initiative in the
country that uses ICT tools to help citizens seek information from the
government.

"There was no additional cost and no fresh appointments were made for the
project," Mishra said pointing out that Jankari is an additional mode for seeking
information under RTI apart from the conventional way of giving applications
to the office concerned.

Jankari, a brainchild of chief minister Nitish Kumar, enables people living in

remotest corners of the state to submit applications for information under RTI
by using private or public telephone by dialling 155311.

The operator receiving the call drafts the application under the RTI Act and
sends the same to the authorities concerned for providing the requisite
information to the applicant.

The applicant is provided with a reference number of the application by the call
centre and in case the information is not provided by the authorities, the
applicant is entitled to file the first appeal and later the second appeal to the
appellate authority and the State Information Commission respectively.

According to the state IT Department sources, the call centre has so far received
22,600 calls, of which 7,070 were applications under RTI.

Overall 3,016 calls have also been received by the call centre for filing first
appeals and 1,400 calls for second appeals, sources disclosed.

The award would be presented at the inaugural session of the 12th National
Conference on e-Governance in Goa of February 12.
PROJECT 1:-
E - SHAKTI
BACKWARD BIHAR GOES FOR THE
SMARTEST CARDS
India has launched its first high-tech census. Citizens will be photographed and
give 10 fingerprints each. The resultant database will be used to issue identity
cards, and later smart cards, to all.
All Indians will welcome high-tech smart cards. Yet the technological lead has
been taken not by the Census Commissioner but, astonishingly, by Bihar. This
state has just completed a pilot project for smart cards in Patna district, called e-
shakti (meaning power from electronic governance). These cards use not just
fingerprints but biometric matching of the human iris, which is state-of-the-art
technology.
E-shakti has covered 13.5 lakh people in Patna district. It is now being expanded to
cover the whole state. This bids fair to be the biggest biometric card scheme in the
world.
It may seem crazy that such a high-tech project is being launched in one of India’s
most backward states. Yet administrative standards in Bihar are so abysmal that no
mere tinkering can check corruption. Only a revolutionary new technology that
bypasses traditional avenues of corruption can deliver the goods in Bihar.
In early 2007, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar worried that corruption and bogus
muster rolls were jeopardizing his political gamble, to stake his future on bringing
development to Bihar. Fellow Biharis were using every trick in the book to evade
his anti-corruption measures.
Then he heard that an e-governance consultant based in Chennai, had devised a
biometric card that could establish identities beyond all doubt, and thus thwart
bogus muster rolls. Clearly such high technology would face challenges in a state
where electricity was scarce in the capital and non-existent in most rural areas.
Nevertheless, the consultant was invited to Patna to demonstrate his new
technology, and he convinced even old cynics.
It was essential to first test the new technology in actual field conditions, learn
lessons from the many glitches that would inevitable arise, and work out ways to
overcome the glitches. Only them would it make sense to scale the project up to
cover the whole state.
So, a pilot project was launched in Patna district. Its immediate aim was to create
corruption-proof electronic muster rolls and job cards. At a later stage the smart
cards could be used for cash transfers of all sorts of government payments to
beneficiaries, from pensions to subsidies. For this, all beneficiaries would need
bank accounts. Problem: vast stretches of rural Bihar had no banks. But the RBI
had approved a scheme for village shopkeepers to act as business correspondents
of banks. So, the shopkeepers could act as mini-branches, providing banks
accounts for every household that could be accessed by swiping a smart card.
The pilot project revealed many glitches. It proved imperative to launch awareness
campaigns using all possible tools, including radio and TV, to sensitise people to
the importance and potential benefits of smart cards. Only after such sensitisation
did all residents of a village attend camps to get registered. Cynicism about past
failed schemes had to be overcome.
In many countries, including the US, the passport authorities scan only two
thumbprints per person. But in notorious Bihar, such a system could enable crooks
to use their ten fingers to create five separate identities for themselves, and claim
multiple benefits. Hence e-shakti was designed to take 10 fingerprints from all
people.
Not even this would have deterred innovative crooks. So e-shakti opted for
biometric iris detection. This would raise costs and take much more time, but could
be truly corruption proof. Ten fingerpints and two irises are hard to fake, even for
the most ingenious Bihari contractors.
The machines initially used for scanning fingerprints were very slow, and the
quality of images left something to be desired. The equipment and software had to
be improved substantially. Speed improvement is an ongoing need.
The software of e-shakti proved to be poorly synchronised with the software of
banks. Software improvements were required to overcome the problem.
Initially, experts thought that a memory of 32 kb would be enough for the smart
cards. Experience showed otherwise. The memory has now been upgraded to 64
kb, with a provision for further expansion to 80 kb. This increases the cost per
card, but is essential for good service delivery.
Fortunately this is an industry marked by falling costs and rising scale. The Bihar
government estimates that the cost of smart cards for the whole state will be Rs
400 crore, which is peanuts for such a large population. This drives home the
lesson that, when crafted properly, high technology is not just fast and effective but
cheap too. It can benefit the poor and needy no less than software millionnaires in
Bengalluru.

PROJECT 2
 BHAVISHYANIDHI PROJECT
 NIC TAKES THE CHALLENGE

It was decided that computerization of Provident Fund office would be carried

out by NIC which had to practically start from the scratch as none of the
information was completely available with the P.F. Office. Government was
facing a lot of pending cases regarding P.F. settlement.

The major activities of General Provident Fund can be grouped under the
following heads –

 Creation of Master
 Subscription to GPF
 Advances from GPF
 Withdrawals from GPF
 GPF A/C Maintenance
 Final Settlement

Introduction and Scope of BHAWISHYANIDHI software

The scope of Bhawishyanidhi is to streamline the State General Provident Fund

in particular and in general for managing their day-to-day activities in an
automated method. This system in addition to the implementation at Directorate
can be implemented in district offices. The extent of replacing the manual
system with the new automated system will be a step forward, providing better
and error free service.

The services to be covered by automating the entire process of GPF office

activities benefit in managing the key activities of accounts and administration.
In addition the developed system acts as a single window platform for the
Management in controlling and monitoring various resources of the department.

Objectives of BHAWISHYANIDHI
  To Make Accounting Process Faster
 Proper Book-Keeping of the Record
 Proper monitoring of Accounts Position
 Complete tracking of the file Movement
 Proper monitoring of the Advances

Salient Features

The automated software covers the entire activities of GPF for

 Faster Accounting/ Proper Book-Keeping/ Reducing staff workload

 Various MIS reports/ Tracing of File-Movement within the office
 Monitoring of Court Cases
 Capturing of Account Allotment Number and Nominee details
 Maintenance of yearly Ledger details like Subscriptions, Refunds and
Advance / Withdrawal / Arrear details of all the subscribers
 Capturing the subscription change requests of various subscribers
 GPF Schedule details by manual entry or by importing data from treasury
 Capturing and settling of missing Credits / Debits of a subscriber
 Yearly Interest Calculation of various subscribers.
 Generation of Check List/ Generation of Collateral Evidence/ Generation
of GPF Slip
 Maintain Ledger Register/ Maintain Interest Liability Register
 Handling of Final Payment, Residual Payment and Corrected Final
Payment to the subscriber / nominee
 Handling / Maintain AG/District Balance Transfer status
 Handling / Maintaining the file movement register

The activities of office will be better managed by the software to monitor the
day-to-day activity. In addition, the automated software will help in removing
the hurdles of the department in timely calculation of Debit and/or Credit. The
software provides timely submission of various reports to different authorities
for effective monitoring.

Future Application

The Most important component of this project is making it fully web-enabled.

An exercise of creating a web-site has already been initiated. It is planned to
create an interface that will help the subscribers to check their accounts
position. They can apply on-line for enrolment as subscriber. The web-site will
also contain a public grievance forum through which Subscribers can submit
their problems to the higher authorities.
PROJECT 3
SCORE PROJECT
SCORE (System for Computerised Registration) Version 2 i.e. (Vinayak) is an
ICT solution incorporating all instruments under Acts for property
registration in Bihar.

Land registration is mainly designed for the purpose of giving legitimacy to the
land deed. At present there are 111 registration offices located at different
places of Bihar functioning under the Registration Department. Out of these, 38
offices are at District Registration offices headed by District Sub-Registrars and
73 offices are Sub-registry offices headed by Sub-registrars. The vision is to
have exemplary e-Governance in the registry offices, completely automated
processes with less paper use, to provide the efficient Government to Citizens
(G2C) services, and to have state-of-art record archival system at all registry
offices of Bihar.

The objectives of the project are to do away with the manual land registration,
design and development of work-flow based ICT solutions, rapid replication of
the software solution to all 111 registry offices, quick delivery of original
registered deeds to parties, extensive use of state-of-the-art technologies like
web-camera, finger print scanners etc., and simplification, transparency,
accountability to be achieved through Government Process Re-engineering
(GPR).

SCORE-2

SCORE (System for Computerised Registration) Version 2 i.e. (Vinayak) – an

ICT solution incorporating all instruments under Acts for property registration
in Bihar has been designed, developed and implemented by the National
Informatics Centre, Bihar State Centre, Patna. Hundred and eleven registry
offices of the state have been SCORE-2 enabled in the record time of three
months on an innovative as well as indigenously evolved cost-effective
implementation model of Hardware on Hire Basis (HOHB) yielding sharp
increase in state revenue, an accrual of INR  0.25 million of fund in BISCORE
society (a society formulated to run the business) within 15 months, creating
ample job employment and healthy competition among the local entrepreneurs.
SCORE-2 also demonstrates the innovative use of the state-of-art technologies
like finger print biometrics devices, web camera, and scanners etc. It completely
and effectively transformed the 200 old system of manual property registration
to Small Office Home Office (SOHO) with less-paper office. The SCORE-2
system is also exemplary in healthy result oriented public/ private collaboration
and the entire scheme is self-sustainable and verifiable.

Moreover, a unique concept, which is innovative and first of its kind, was
adopted in Bihar with the implementation of the bank challan (official receipt
for payment or delivery) for the deposit of stamp duties/ registration fees/
additional stamp duties with the doing away of submitting stamp papers. The
cash transaction is completely stopped. The SCORE-2 system not only
facilitates quick registration and delivery of deeds but with numerous reforms
such as the government process re-engineering, record keeping transactions
have become very simple, transparent and accountable. SCORE-2's online
instantaneous help-desk for public for verification of required stamp duty,
registration fees and requisite enclosures has brought public more closer to each
and every registry offices of the state. The monotonous jobs like maintaining so
many registers for these registered deeds have been taken care by the SCORE-2
back-office computerisation modules. The overall revenue has increased
manifold, through the induction of SCORE-2 for e-Registration of properties in
Bihar.

Recently seeing the growing demand, the land and revenue department with the
help of NIC has started Mobile Registration Offices at various identified
locations of Patna. It worked for entire month of June 2007. This was again first
of its kind in the country.
 PROJECT 4
SARK PROJECT
BUSINESS OVERVIEW
SARK business operations are divided into four major verticals –

1. E-Governance Solutions
2. Knowledge Center Solutions
3. Citizen Service Delivery Platform Management and 
4. New Services e-Integration

E-Governance Solutions
SARK e-governance solutions cover three business segments – 

1. Local body management solutions

2. Employment Exchange Solutions
3. Tourism & Transport solutions

Local body management solutions:

SARK has developed and it has been managing the Citizen Interface of
Municipal E-Governance Solutions for Municipal Corporation of Delhi
successfully over the past five years and now reaching out to other major
corporations. SARK delivered its Panchayat solutions to over 25 Panchayats in
Andhra Pradesh and other Nagar Palikas in Madhya Pradesh.

SARK won the mandate to setup 2000 rural Common Service Centers (CSCs)
in Haryana and Bihar. This has given the opportunity to access another 2000
Panchayats to expand its solutions reach and services delivery.  SARK has
developed e-governance application for Panchayat in bilingual form. The
product received good appreciation from District Collectors in Andhra Pradesh.

SARK developed IT solutions for Mandal Parishad Development Office

(MPDO) that helps in administration and control of various government
sponsored schemes management. 

SARK developed Public Health Administration portal as part of its servicing

offering to MCD covering Registration of Births and Deaths, Immunization
Management, Communicable Diseases

Information Management. This project won many national awards and

appreciation from national and international organisations. The application has
been suggested for nation wide distribution by the Registrar General of India to
MCD.

SARK developed property tax application based on self assessment model for
MCD and this application has won national e-governance award. SARK is
executing the facilities management and services.The applications developed
have great potential for scalability and roll out to other local bodies in India and
third world countries.
Employment Exchange Management Solutions:
SARK has designed the directorate of employment exchange portal for Ministry
of Labour and Empoyment, Government of Delhi. SARK is executing the
facilities management contract since 2005. The application has features for Job
Seeker Registration, Employer Registration, Vacancy Registration, Selection of
Candidates and feedback management apart from the range of statutory reports.
The application has many job aspirant driven services. 

SARK experience in delivering employment exchange portals for Government

of Delhi, gives unique position for it to access other state governments to offer
similar solutions and advance into pre-employment and out sourcing/temping
industry. The application is now being actively marketed to other states.
Tourism & Transport Solutions:
SARK has been a pioneer in e-ticketing/pass solutions for state road transport
undertakings. SARK has rendered these services for 6 years to Delhi Transport
Corporation. Similar services have been rendered to North West Karnataka
Road Transport Corporation, North East Karnataka Road Transport
Corporation, Metropolitan Road Transport Corporation, Chennai, Thane
Municipal Transport Corporation (TMT) and Navi Mumbai Municipal
Transport Corporation.  

SARK developed online reservations portal for Delhi Tourism and Transport
Development Corporation (DTTDC).