Reap economies in e-governance
The central idea about innovation is not the concept itself but its proper implementation. Consider for instance innovation in governance and policy design. The mavens see much potential in leveraging modern information and communication technologies to shore up the social and economic development delivery mechanism via the internet and e-governance.
The national e-governance plan does in fact envisage the setting up of 2,50,000 common service centres (CSCs) or telecentres in rural areas, for public access to computers and the online delivery of services. But sustaining the programme calls for proactive policy.
A recent working paper at IIM Bangalore is on designing and augmenting CSCs, keeping the ground realities in mind. The paper notes that the initial experience of 23 states implementing the plan for e-governance with 90,000 CSCs has not been encouraging what with many of them simply closing down for various reasons. The telecentres are generally suboptimally used for music downloads, mobile phone recharge, etc.
The paper adds that the provision mostly for business to consumer, or B2C, services at the CSCs has meant much below-potential results. Also, providing government to citizen, or G2C, services at the telecentres is unlikely to make them financially sustainable it is averred.
However, the active scope for G2G services or inter-government online transactions between departments and rural centres, together with provision for B2C and G2C at the CSCs would make them far more financially viable and sustainable. Such a holistic approach at the rural telecentres should also vastly improve the quality of field data and hugely enhance access for the rural poor and women, it is opined. The CSCs can then function as rural data collection centres for departments such as revenue, health, education and agriculture.
The paper mentions of two significant developments of recent years: businesses have started recognising the potential of rural markets, and governments have begun relying on telecentres to provide G2C services such as ration card issuance and e-pay. And the business model at the rural telecentres can range from fully public projects such as Gyandoot in Madhya Pradesh to wholly private ones such as ITC's e-Chaupal. The paper notes that Karnataka has set up 764 CSCs at the Hobli level, an administrative unit of 45-55 villages, in the public private partnership mode for G2C services.
But the paper is of the view that providing the same set of G2C services at the gram panchayat level would 'certainly make these centres financially unviable.' Hence the recommendation to expand the range of services available at the telecentres by embedding all government programmes and services (both G2C and G2G), to gain from the economies of scope and strengthen management information systems as well.
The paper calls for broad-basing of services at the CSCs with empirical evidence from a pilot project in Tumkur district, Karnataka and the Akshaya project in Kerala. The paper shows how financial sustainability is achieved by providing a cluster of services at the telecentres. As per the Karnataka pilot project, some 97% of telecentre revenues are on account of government services, G2C and G2G. In the Kerala project, over 85% of CSC revenues are similarly arrived at. The Tumkur district pilot project provides services such as record of tenancy and crop rights, about 42 rural digitisation services, tele-education, gram panchayat administration, etc.
There is huge potential to improve governance in rural areas by making better use of the CSCs, it is suggested. Consider for instance the national rural employment guarantee scheme. The village panchayat secretary can well spend six hours a day maintaining and poring over some 60 record books. Instead, the data can well be collected by CSCs more efficiently, and uploaded regularly. Or take crop data. Instead of using visual cues to record crop data, handheld devices can be used to electronically authenticate such figures accurately. Ditto for school attendance or the midday meal scheme, as inexpensive biometric capability can provide innovative ways to collect data and monitor performance.
It is elaborated in the paper that leveraging telecentres for a wide-range of services would mean a paradigm shift. It would for example facilitate data aggregation on schooling, allow frequent health data collection, and be cost-efficient too. By involving telecentres, the overall costs for these processes can be reduced, it is maintained. The provision for B2C, G2C and most important, G2G services at the rural telecentres would reduce tedious manual data collection procedures, result in strong data networks at the grassroots and greatly enhance the potential for inter-government coordination, concludes the paper.
(The Financial Sustainability of e-Governance Embedded Rural Telecentres, by Gopal Naik et al, IIM-Bangalore working paper No. 352, 2011)
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