The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Citizen service centres to empower rural people

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Tuesday, Mar 18, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Citizen service centres to empower rural people

Special Correspondent

They will be set up on a public-private partnership mode

It will enable people to access government, companies’ business services
They will initially serve as a single window service delivery channel

CHENNAI: As many as 5,440 citizen service centres (CSCs) will be set up in the State in a year to empower rural people and bridge the digital divide, Kumar Jayant, Director, Directorate of E-Governance in the State Government, said on Monday.

He was addressing a conference on digitalising administration, organised by the Post-graduate and Research Department of Public Administration, Presidency College, Chennai.

Noting that two companies — 3i Infotech and SREI Infrastructure — had been awarded the project of setting up the centres, Mr. Jayant said the CSCs would enable people to access government services, apart from the companies’ business services. For running the centres, the firms would pay a charge to the Government for associating themselves with the project. The CSCs would be formed on the mode of public-private partnership.

Besides, the State government was implementing the State Wide Area Network and State Data Centre projects, the Director said. Mr. Jayant later told The Hindu that SREI would set up 1,040 in one region, comprising Vellore, Krishnagiri, Dharmapuri and Tiruvannamalai districts, while 3i Infotech would set up 4,400 CSCs in four other regions in the State.

“We have asked the Service Providers to set up at least one or two CSCs on a pilot basis so that we can rectify the shortfalls in the earlier stage itself. Actually, these service providers are supposed to put up 20 per cent of CSCs in the State within four months from the date of approval. By going in for a test mode, we will know exactly what is the table space required for each Centre, the cost and the time frame taken etc,” he said.

Initially, the CSCs would serve as a single window service delivery channel for providing government services of Taluk Offices, Collectorates, Registration Department, Transport Department, Civil Supplies Department and Municipalities. Mr. Jayant said some State Government departments had networked their back-end services and were gearing up to link it with the front-end system.

Addressing the conference, David Hopper, U.S. Consul-General in Chennai, referred to the International City/Country Management Association’s study of local governments in the U.S. with a population in excess of 2,500 and said it found that almost all had put up a website online.

Variation in quality

The quality and quantity of information and services provided online by all the different government entities varied widely.

Recognition of that divergent quality and usability brought on the next stage in e-government’s evolution — the challenge to identify the best practices of online service delivery and the best methods to use advanced information technologies to delivery the greatest payoff for governments and for the citizens they served.

A survey of government IT specialists found that 80 per cent of the respondents identified the protection of confidential and sensitive information as a critical priority for their agencies.

Calling for making Internet more accessible to the disabled, Mr. Hopper said many government web sites in his country needed to do much more to make themselves accessible to all Americans, especially for the visually and hearing-impaired and for people who did not speak English.

C.P. Barthwal, Vice-Chancellor, Kumaun University, Nainital, emphasised the need for a holistic approach in e-governance.

V.P. Duraisamy, Deputy Speaker, State Assembly, said researchers and scholars should undertake an in-depth study of the impact of various development programmes and projects in public administration.

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