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>View discussions about this entry Country: India
Organization: Transparency & Accountability Network
Focus of activity - Oversight/Accountability
Year the initative began (yyyy) - 2001
Positioning in the Mosaic of solutions
Description of initiative - What is the main focus (products, services, etc.) of your initiative and how does it contribute to ending corruption? What avenues of corruption are you primarily addressing? What activities does it involve for your organization? Who are your primary beneficiaries and target groups? "e-Administration" is a web based, paper less communication and collaboration software application including work flow management, for introducing transparency and accountability, to eliminate corruption, create a level playing field and alleviate poverty among the citizens.
The Tool mainly helps to remove the lack of transparency and the consequent lack of accountability behind government to government and government to citizen communications and transactions and empowers the citizens with the right to know on real time basis, all developments concerning self and the community. The "e-Administration" Tool can be deployed at the Panchayat, Block, District, State and National level. The 600,000 Common Service centers proposed to be set up as a part of the National Alliance for Mission 2007 of govt. of India, can help to integrate every village of India with the national stream. The tool can help to create a comprehensive database of citizens and organizations right from birth to death. The growth and development of every individual and organization can be tracked through the various stages. A single Multi Purpose Unique Biometric Smart Card (BSC) for every individual can help to achieve this objective. We have designed and developed the application and extend support in implementation, to integrate the citizens and the service providers including governments using software, hardware, networking, etc. The primary beneficiary is the citizen - the common man and woman, the rural poor who are marginalized and denied of communication, information, knowledge and empowerment. Innovation - How does your approach differ from existing programs in the field? Which components of your initiative are particularly novel or unique (e.g. the products and services, the technology used, the delivery or financing mechanism)? There is no known equivalent tool, that enables registration of citizens and officials from the village to the national level, integrating all in one platform and establishing the entire communication chain.
The tool enables creation of the entire Geographical Divisions of the Country by State, District, Block, Panchayat and Hamlets and registering the citizens uniquely using their Name, Date of Birth, Parents' names, Place of Birth, Place of residence, Photograph, biometric of fingers / iris, and creating a Unique ID and Smart card. The complete personal details such as health conditions, allergies, education, skill training, employment, salry, old age pension, etc. can be updated and tracked regularly. The various Service Organizations and Government Departments from the National level, through the State, the District, the Block and the Panchayat can be created in a hierarchy and their branches and departments entered. The positions of employees in various departments and thier names can be mapped to create a complete organization hierarchy. The uniqueness of the tool is that a citizen need not have to approach any official outside their immediate village for any of their needs. The system would automatically forward the citizen's request to the concerened department and the status of the request can be seen transparently by the citizen and all officials in the vertical hierarchy of the organization / government. The action or inaction of any offical would be transparent to all, thus making the service organization responsive and accountable to the citizen. Every citizen, however low they may be in society, can demand the right to know and timely response to meet their needs. This would be an unique empowerment of the citizen as enshrined in the constitution. "e-Administration" is developed using Open Source Tools, thus making the cost of ownership the lowest possible. The tool can act as an open platform for any citizen to genuinely communicate to all. Delivery Model - How does your initiative reach its target populations? What communications mechanism(s) do you have in place? How do you measure their impact? The 'e-Administration" Tool has been implemented by the Government of Pondicherry, a Union Territory State in Southern India for establishing an e-Platform for the Single Window Clearnace System for the Industrial Guidance Bureau to facilitate setting up of Industries.
This initiative has directly impacted 100s of officials, 1000s of industrialists and indirectly benefitted 10,000s of marginalized citizens in gaining useful employment. The Budget 2004-2005 address to the Pondicherry Legislative Assembly of the Lt. Governor of Pondicherry gives the details (Items 19 & 20) can be seen at: http://pondicherry.nic.in and http://www.pon.nic.in/open/depts/finance/lgspeech2004.pdf Regular interactions held with Governments, NGOs, Media to bring about the awareness need for change from the traditional registers, muster rolls and paper which are fraught with corruption to modern ICT technologies that are tamper proof and can help eliminate corruption and alleviate poverty. We have been recognized for our grass root change management initiatives by various national forums such a 7th e-Gov Conference of govt. of India, Manthan Award 2006 held by Digital Empowerment Foundation, etc. and can be seen at: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/ew/2007/03/19/stories/2007031900110300.htm http://www.indianexpress.com/story/21904.html http://www.manthanaward.org/Bio-metric%20tracking%20of%20payments%20under%20NREGA.asp The New Indian Express http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IET20040705124325&Page=T&Title=Southern+News+%2D+Tamil+Nadu&Topic=0&aDate=7%2F6%2F2004 The Hindu, Metro Plus, Chennai on "Paperless or less paper?" on Saturday Jan 08, 2005 can be seen at http://www.hindu.com/mp/2005/01/08/stories/2005010802070100.htm The Hindu Business Line Monday, Sep 06, 2004, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India Key Operational Partnerships - What key partnerships have you established to make your model possible or more efficient? Who are your partners (business, social, government, other) and what are their roles? How central are these partnerships for your initiative. We have established partnership with Government organizations and departments, Local Bodies such as Municipalities and Panchayats and Industry / Citizens organizations such as Confederation of indian industries, Association of Small Industries of UT of Pondicherry and other NGOs. These are central to our working, as it is ultimately the Government that renders service to its citizens.
The Government is now championing the initiative as they are convinced of the advantages and have realised the benefits. We extend the enabling environment by giving the backup support. The association of local Industries and citizens' representative organizations have also been actively involved in evolving the application, carrying out pilot tests and satisfying themselves, the initiative would benefit the citizens, thus making it a collective affair. So the sense of ownership is inbuilt into the initiative. We are also networking with Civil Society Organizations / Groups such as eGovIndia, Bytesfor all, RTI4NGOs, AIDS Beyond Borders, UNDP Solutions exchange, etc. for widening the zone of awareness and showcasing the successes. Financial Model - Which mechanisms do you have in place to ensure that your beneficiaries can afford your products or services? Do you have financial schemes or arrangements for low-income and marginalized populations? The application is made available on open source basis to government and citizens. The ICT initiatives can be funded by the Governments.
The citizens need to pay a nominal service fee of re.1.00 per transaction, to make the initiative pro poor for benefitting the low-income and marginalized populations. The Village Panchayat / community can provide the service and offer a basket of services in addition to basic communication service.
Effectiveness - What has been the concrete impact of your project to date? How many people have benefited from your program in total? What policies, communities, or institutions have been influenced to make fundamental changes because of your work? The initiative has directly impacted 100s of officials, directly benefited 1000 industrialists and 10,000 marginalized citizens in gaining useful employment.
The Government has now come to realise that e-Administration for e-Governance is an effective change management tool for the grass root, and is well accepted by officers and staff of various departments and local bodies, when presented as an empowerment tool. Biometric tracking of benefits to citizens is being accepted as a way of life in Governance, for fool proof identification and empowerment. This would help to eliminate corruption, create a level playing field and alleviate poverty. More and more Government organizations are coming forward to adopt the tool, as it has unlimited potential. Some communications in this regard are sent separately.
Scaling up Strategy - What is your priority for the next 3 years and please describe why. The priority is to make the tool accepted for implementation in the national Alliance for Misison 2007 Phase I covering 100,000 villages of India.
We have already offered "e-Administration" e-Platform for e-governance for the implementation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Schemes to various State Govts., the Dept. of Information technology, Govt. of India, National Alliance for Mission 2007, etc.
Origin of the Initiative - Tell the personal story that will help people connect to your work. How did the initiative start? Was there a particular individual or event driving the idea? Tell the reader the story behind the innovation. After the return of Kris Dev from North America, he found the systems continued to be so bad in Iindia, that it was person dependent and not system based.
Absence of a single individual can bring the whole organization work to stop. And every where the motto followed was: "Name the person, i shall tell you the rule" Invaribaly the statement was "I want to help you, but .... (what is in it for me?). Doing once duty for which they were getting paid out of the tax payer's money was considered a great out of the way service to the individual or organization. Delays were breeding corruption. Every one wanted to get things done, by hook or crook and no one wanted to follow systems and procedures. Hence a transparent communication and work flow tool was felt essential for the developing world, to make every individual accountable and take ownership for the decisions they make or avoid makin Main Obstacles to Scaling Up - List the two (2) main obstacles to scale up your innovation (policy, legal, organizational, people, financial, etc.)? 1. Government policy on transparency and accountability - Though the Right to Information Act 2005 has been established in India, the true spirit of transparency and accountability is yet to sink in. The attitude of hide and seek and avoid till you can continues. Unless caught, we are not thieves has ingrained too much and the wrong doers are the role model. The right doer is laughed at as someone who cannot swim with the current. hence either they directly abet corruption or support it silently.
2. Poor organization culture Main Partnership Challenges - What are your major challenges with partnerships? (E.g., identification of partners, implementation of partnerships, relationship management, etc.) he main challenge in partnership is identification of the right partners and convincing them of the potential of "e-Administration" Tool as a grass root change movement, as most seem to be interested in the big money in mega metropolis and urban centers and not bothered about true change in rural areas. The social part of the entrepreneurship is given a go bye for money.
Contact Information:
Kris Dev
Founder Transparency & Accountability Network (NGO) krisdev@gmail.com B4, 27/12, 3rd Main Road, kasturiba nagar, Adyar, Chennai-600020, TN, India. India Tel: 91-44-24411600 Website: http://TrAcNet.blogspot.com Discussions about this entry |
e-Administration, an e-Platform for e-Governance
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This is an exciting initiative in part due to the application of IT and the fact that it is financed on a fee basis. Some issues are unclear, however. What in fact is the impact of this on corruption – what kinds of corrupt actions does it discourage, and what impact can you demonstrate? Also, the plan for scaling up is not spelled out. Can the poor in fact pay for the service, or does the requirement to pay the fee restrict the use of the service? What about having a scale of fees so that wealthier people can subsidize the poorer ones? Last, is this a for-profit or a non-profit initiative?
Thanks Pat for your thoughts. My response is as follows:
What in fact is the impact of this on corruption – what kinds of corrupt actions does it discourage, and what impact can you demonstrate?
Corruption revolves around secrecy. If the secrecy element is removed and all communications and transactions are made transparent, there can be no room for corruption. Any action or inaction would be transparent and subject to questioning by any one. No one would want to indulge in any thing that would attract attention of all and the individual made to answer for his / her actions.
Also, the plan for scaling up is not spelled out.
The process of scaling up is already on its way from the village level upwards to the block, the district, state and national level. A recent initiative towards this is at http://www.indianexpress.com/story/33365.html.
Can the poor in fact pay for the service, or does the requirement to pay the fee restrict the use of the service?
The poor can very well afford to pay Indian Rupee 1.00 per service (1/40 of a USD) as compared to spending about Rupees 10.00 (1/4 of a USD) towards as at present, on an earning of Rupees 40 to 80 per day (USD 1 to 2). The payment would in no way restrict the use of the tool.
What about having a scale of fees so that wealthier people can subsidize the poorer ones?
Yes. Possible, provided there is proper identification of the rich and the scale of fees is mutually agreed. But this should not lead to another corrupt practise due to discrimination.
Last, is this a for-profit or a non-profit initiative?
It is not-for-profit initiative - of people, by people, for people - the stakeholders.
Kris Dev
Pat,
many thanks for your inciteful remarks. i am benefitted by your questons and would like to respond as follows:
1. What in fact is the impact of this on corruption – what kinds of corrupt actions does it discourage, and what impact can you demonstrate?
Answer: e-Administration platform can make all communications and transactions between individuals and organizations, transparent, thereby bringing in accountability.
The origin of corruption is greed and secrecy. No one wants to indulge in corruption openly. So if the secrecy part is removed, greed can be minimized.
It is observed in the devloping world, the present form of governance is full of bureaucratic red tapism, leading to corruption.
Wherever e-Administration is implemented and the human interface minimized, and IT applications adapted, corruption is minimized. No official can keep any issue or request or petition pending beyond a bench marked time, lest it would attract the attention of the top administration. The citizen can see transparently online where the request is pending and make a hue and cry.
Unique identification of citizen and tracking the benefits due to them and received by them has created a huge difference to alleviate poverty.
2. The plan for scaling up is not spelled out.
Answer: The plan to scale up is by convincing every government to start small, realise the benefits and scale fast. In fact recent successful proof of concept have been established in one Panchayat (cluster of villages) in Bihar State, one of the most backward states of India to introduce transparency and accountability. Based on the satisfactory demonstration, the Administration of the state has given clearance to Implement a pilot in one complete Block (cluster of Panchayats), before scaling up to a complete district (cluster of Blocks) and the whole State (cluster of Districts).
A recent news item in a leading Indian daily explains the success and proposed scaling up as follows:
The Indian Express Tuesday June 12, 2007
Front Page Story
Bihar shows smart card way to cleaner rural job scheme
Jaya Menon
Posted online: Tuesday, June 12, 2007 at 0000 hrs
Villagers working under NREG scheme get tamper-proof identity cards through biometric authentication
CHENNAI, JUNE 11: Devanti Devi, Dilip Shaw and Bisuandayal Manjhi of the Gonpura panchayat in Bihar will soon be sporting smart job cards that also double up as ATM/debit cards. They are workers under the National Rural Employment Guarantee programme (NREG) and are among 170 men and women in two villages who would be the first to be registered as NREG members through a foolproof biometric verification device.
For three days from last Tuesday, after the initial hostility and scepticism, villagers in Kurkuri and Dhuparchak Mushahari in Phulwarisharif block of Patna district, gathered at the Panchayat office to place their fingers (all 10) on a Korean-made biometric device. Each finger was registered twice for getting the best value of minutiae counts (the whorls and ridges on a finger).
Then the villagers were photographed and all their personal data was registered on their NREG Card. With the photograph and details scanned and attached to their names, the state created a permanent database on the workers.
After the registration process was completed, the verification was done immediately by entering the NREG ID number, and the beneficiary was asked to place any finger on the biometric device, a small machine that is easily portable to the worksite. The individual's photograph instantly popped up from the database on the computer monitor.
"The technology has been proven through a transparent system. Now we have to link it to our NREG process which will give every member a job card or a smart card and cover entire Bihar," Anup Mukherji, Commissioner of the Rural Development Department, told The Indian Express.
All that a panchayat would need for implementing a fool-proof registration and verification process is a biometric device costing about Rs. 20,000, a laptop computer of about Rs. 25,000, a webcam or a digital camera and a personnel for operating the devices.
With Nitish Kumar keen on making the poverty alleviation programme a success in his state, his government had initially hit on the idea of fingerprinting each of the NREG workers at the time of registration and during payment of their wages. But this was hardly effective since verification of the fingerprints was a mind-boggling process and required a forensic expert to certify each of them.
It was around this time that an article in The Indian Express on January 28 this year on a biometric tracking concept devised by Kris Dev, a Chennai-based e-governance consultant, caught the attention of the Bihar administration. Mukherji got in touch with Kris Dev and asked him to prove to the state government that the technology worked at the ground level. "If your solution does all that the article describes, it would be ideal for Bihar where people find ways to beat all systems," Mukherji told Kris Dev.
Dev went to Patna in February to make a presentation to the Bihar State Electronics Corporation and later at two villages. On June 7, Nitish Kumar watched the demo in the two villages that Kris Dev presented and gave a spot clearance for the concept to be implemented throughout Bihar.
"It is surprising that Bihar should become the first state in India to introduce biometric tracking for NREG," said Dev today.
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/33365.html and http://ll2b.blogspot.com.
3. Can the poor can pay for the service.
Answer: yes. The poor can pay for the service, provided it is stark low and just covering the cost. A Re.1.00 per service (1/40 of a USD) is an affordable fees, as compared to spending about Rs. 10.00 (1/4 of a USD) and loosing a days wage (USD 2.00) for filing a request or a petition and further cost for visits and follow up.
4. What about having a scale of fees so that wealthier people can subsidize the poorer ones?
Answer: Yes. It is possible, provided, every individual is uniquely identified and a fare sacle of fees mutually agreed. But from our studies, invariably, ny form of discrimination or classification, would lead to rancour and corruption. The rich obviously would not like to give more to subsidize the poor. But over a period of time, the usage of the rich would increase to off set the cost. It would help to create a level playing field, irrespective of the status of the person - for all angles.
5. Is this a for-profit or a non-profit initiative?
Answer: It is a non profit initiative, of people, by people, for people - the stakeholders.
Thanks again Pat for raising such valuable issues that I missed out. Please feel free to react to my comments.
Kris Dev.
Hello,
My name is Rich Gottbreht from Global Insights and I am one of the entrants in the competition. Our work centers on helping anyone concerned about corruption learn about the subject through my book, our board game and its associated seminars, as well as low cost consulting. To find out more about us please visit our website www.globalinsights.biz. From the home page, you can link to information about us, our products and what people say about our products and services. From the details in the initiative we submitted you should also note that some of the proceeds from our sales will eventually go to a high integrity leadership development foundation. Also, if you are interested, down the road we will be looking for alliances and contacts in every country.
Thanks,
Rich Gottbreht
Thanks rich. Sounds interesting. Just had a brief visit to your site. Sure we can explore mutually beneficial opportunities.
Kris Dev