Background

Over the years, sustained efforts have been made at multiple levels to improve the delivery of public services and simplify the process of accessing them. In this regard, severale-governance initiatives have been undertaken by various State Governments and Central Ministries to usher in an era of e-Government. e-Governance in India has steadily evolved from computerization of Government Departments to initiatives that encapsulate the finer points of Governance, such as citizen centricity, service orientation and transparency.

The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP)

The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) was conceptualized tofocus on e-Governance initiatives at the national level with an aim to "Make all Government services accessible to the common man in his locality, through common service delivery outlets,and ensure efficiency, transparency, and reliability of such services at affordable costs to realise the basic needs of the common man". The strategy adopted was centralized planning and decentralized planning. The Government initially approved the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), comprising of 27 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) and 8 components, on May 18, 2006. 4 more mission mode projects namely ‘Education’, ‘Health’, ‘Posts’ and ‘Public Distribution System’ were added to NeGP portfolio in 2011. As part of NeGP, core ICT infrastructure has been created by MeitY. This includes State Data Centers, State Wide Area Network, State Service Delivery Gateways, Mobile Seva and eGov AppStore. More than 1.2 lakh Common Service Centers were made operational as service delivery outlets across all the States/UTs. With the learnings from the experience of implementation of NeGP over the last 7 yearsand an analysis of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of NeGP revealed several issues mainly in terms of lack of proper dose of Government Process Reengineering in Government Schemes / projects / applications / databases, lack of integration & interoperability amongst Government Applications & databases, limited scope of existing Mission Mode Projects, lack of leveraging emerging technologies like Mobile and Cloud and lack of Inclusive Mission Mode Projects like Women & Child Development MMP, Social Justice & Empowerment MMP etc. e-Kranti has been designed to address the aforesaid challenges.

e-Kranti (Transforminge-GovernanceforTransforming Governance)

Considering the critical need for transforming e-Governance and promote mobile Governance and Good Governance in the country, the approach and key components of e-Kranti have been approved by the Union Cabinet on 25.03.2015 with the vision of “Transforming e-Governance for Transforming Governance”.

The key principles of e-Kranti are as follows:

1. Transformation and not Translation - All project proposals in e-Kranti must involve substantial transformation in the quality, quantity and manner of delivery of services and significant enhancement in productivity and competitiveness.

2. Integrated Services and not Individual Services - A common middleware and integration of the back end processes and processing systems is required to facilitate integrated service delivery to citizens.

3. Government Process Reengineering (GPR) to be mandatory in every MMP - To mandate GPR as the essential first step in all new MMPs without which a project may not be sanctioned. The degree of GPR should be assessed and enhanced for the existing MMPs.

4. ICT Infrastructure on Demand – Government departments should be provided with ICT infrastructure, such as connectivity, cloud and mobile platform on demand. In this regard, National Information Infrastructure (NII), which is at an advanced stage of project formulation, would be fast-tracked by DeitY.

5. Cloud by Default – The flexibility, agility and cost effectiveness offered by cloud technologies would be fully leveraged while designing and hosting applications. Government Cloud shall be the default cloud for Government Departments. All sensitive information of Government Departments shall be stored in a Government Cloud only. Any Government Department may use a private cloud only after obtaining permission from Department of Electronics and Information Technology which shall do so after assessing the security and privacy aspects of the proposed cloud.

6. Mobile First - All applications are designed/ redesigned to enable delivery of services through mobile.

7. Fast Tracking Approvals – To establish a fast-track approval mechanism for MMPs, once the Detailed Project Report (DPR) of a project is approved by the Competent Authority, Empowered Committees may be constituted with delegated powers to take all subsequent decisions.

8. Mandating Standards and Protocols – Use of e-Governance standards and protocols as notified by DeitY be mandated in all e-governance projects.

9. Language Localization - It is imperative that all information and services in e-Governance projects are available in Indian languages as well.

10. National GIS (Geo-Spatial Information System) - NGIS to be leveraged as a platform and as a service in e-Governance projects.

11. Security and Electronic Data Preservation - All online applications and e-services to adhere to prescribed security measures including cyber security. The National Cyber Security Policy 2013 notified by DeitY must be followed.

All new and on-going eGovernance projects as well as the existing projects, which are being revamped, should now follow the key principles of e-Kranti.

Progress Status

There are 44 Mission Mode Projects under e-Kranti programme. These mission mode projects are grouped into Central, State and Integrated projects. The status of MMPs are as follow:

Note: e-Transaction counts can be taken from the e-Taal (Electronic Transaction Aggregation & Analysis Layer) portal (http://etaal.gov.in(link is external)). E-Taal is a portal for dissemination of statistics related to electronic transactions under national and state level e-governance projects including MMPs. It receives transaction statistics from web based applications periodically on near real time basis. eTaal presents quick analysis of transaction counts in tabular and graphical form.

Mission Mode Projects under e-Kranti

Technology for Education – e-Education

This refers to broadband and wi-fi connectivity to Schools, digital literacy program at the national level and leveraging Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs).

Technology for Health – e-Healthcare

This refers to use of technology for better healthcare service delivery that includes online medical consultation, online medical records, online medicine supply, pan-India exchange for patient information, etc.

Technology for Farmers

This would facilitate farmers to get real time price information, online ordering of inputs and online cash, loan, and relief payment with mobile banking.

Technology for Security

This refers to provisioning off Mobile based emergency services and disaster related services to citizens on real time basis so that they can take precautionary measures well in time and minimize loss of lives and properties.

Technology for Justice

Interoperable Criminal Justice System shall be strengthened by leveraging several related applications, i.e. e-Courts, e-Police, e-Jails and e-Prosecution.

Technology for Financial Inclusion

Financial inclusion shall be strengthened using mobile banking, Micro-ATM program and CSCs/ Post Offices.

Technology for Cyber Security

National Cyber Security Co-ordination Centre would be set up to ensure safe and secure cyber-space within the country.