Making ICTs work for people

Dr. Hafiz Pasha, Assistant Secretary General, United Nations (UN) during his recent visit to the National Institute for Smart Government (NISG), Hyderabad informed the bewildered audiences, that rural India’s two most popular uses of Internet kiosks were to download sample Senior Secondary School (SSC) papers and to pirate CD’s.

Dr. Pasha’s comment highlights the multifarious ways, in which Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have impacted lives of millions the world over.


ICTs in India
India is a land of plenty. The sheer size and variety of its population presents ample opportunity for ICTs to provide varied interventions to the citizens. Over the past decade, the Indian government has boosted the technology and ICT market by driving a spate of reforms to position India higher in the global markets. With the influx of technology has arrived an ocean of knowledge which can now be made widely available and beneficial to citizens from all economic strata and in particular the rural population who form the major part of our population, but who are often the last recipients of any national development reforms.

In India today, the focus is slowly shifting to the use of ICTs to improve public service delivery of governments. Information dissemination about government schemes and public services, employment generation, providing information about health-care/education, agriculture and market prices, are some of the popular ways in which ICTs are used to enhance human capabilities. ICT for Development projects play an important role in equitable knowledge and opportunity distribution.

Despite evidence showcasing the positive impacts of ICT for development projects, it is often argued that ICTs have no role to play in scenarios where the citizens are unable to even provide themselves with basic amenities and necessities like food, health and education. In reality, though great strides are being made in using ICTs to enhance development goals, more often than not the factors that work against it are not taken into cognizance. Weak local infrastructure which raise connectivity issues, lack of technical skills and local capacities, and lack of relevant content are some of the problems that are commonly raised during implementation of ICTD projects. But the solution for these do not lie in decrying ICT but in attacking the problems encountered and developing localised solutions for the issues raised. Today there is increasingly a need to integrate, harmonise, take advantage and build upon the scores of disjointed ICTD efforts, so that the best can be replicated and the failures can be learnt from.

The background
During the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000, eight Millennium Development Goals were identified in the fight against poverty, illiteracy, hunger, lack of education, gender inequality, child and maternal health, disease and environmental degradation. New technologies, especially ICTs were then recognised as a powerful tool to fulfil these goals.


Dr. Maxine Olson, UNDP Resident Representative (India)
When the Government of India (GoI) launched a National e-Governance Action Plan (NeGAP) for implementation during the period 2003-2007, its focus was on laying the foundation and providing impetus for long-term growth of e-Governance within the country. It was with this intention that the NISG, a not-for-profit company, was established by the GoI at Hyderabad, in the year 2002, in association with NASSCOM and the government of Andhra Pradesh on a public-private partnership model. NISG’s mission was to facilitate application of public and private resources to e-Government and establish its expertise in the areas of architecture, consultancy and training in the e-Government sector. NISG by focusing on these three areas aimed to achieve a factor enhancement in the quality and pace of implementation of e-Government programmes in India.

UNDP announced its country programme for India for the period 2003-07 and set as its priority, the goal to work towards the promotion of sustainable human development and the elimination of human poverty and inequalities. Dr. Maxine Olson, UNDP Resident Representative (India), states that though the importance of ICT for Development appears to be recognised by many countries and their development partners, ICTD is still very much an emerging area of focus with all the attendant challenges of capacity development and the lack of empirical evidence on cost-benefit. “India however, with its tremendous potential in information, communication and software services, could catalyse the use of ICTs for development in order to maximise the potential for meeting the MDG targets across all sectors,” she says. However it was GoI’s commitment to ICTs for Development that encouraged UNDP to partner with them. Says Maxine, “It was then that we partnered with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MOCIT), GoI and NISG to support and identify ICT for Development initiatives. This partnership is expected to contribute to building knowledge through stock-taking of lessons learned and experience networking”.

Renu Budhiraja and SS Grover f rom the Department of IT, GoI share Maxine views. “The ICTD project would provide significant inputs to GoI NeGAP initiatives. The scope and social vision of the project is larger than most others. It will provide a good platform for innovation and experimentation” they feel.

The ICTD project was decided to be implemented during the period of 2003-07. The initial commitment on the project was set at US$ 5 million with an indicative budget of US$ 30 million over a 4-year period. It was agreed that NISG would play the role of the implementing agency for the ICTD project and that the pilot initiatives chosen from across the country under this project would be implemented by project partners like state governments and NGOs. NISG would further be responsible for project management and monitoring the progress of pilot implementation.

The ICTD project
Designed with the mission to make ICTs work for people, the ICTD project aims to implement and encourage pilot initiatives in the areas of e-Government and e-Governance, develop solutions and applications to bridge the digital divide, prepare roadmaps for e-Governance, document success stories, facilitate transfer of knowledge, and conduct capacity building in the area of e-Government.

The project planning and implem entation would combine the use of appropriate technology with capital-intensive infrastructure to execute ICTD projects that result in maximum impact. The knowledge and experience required to deal with development challenges at all levels during this project shall be obtained by drawing on the strengths and views of the government, civil society, the private sector and the international development community (including donors and international civil society organisations) for this project.

Much thought went in before the selection of the economic/social areas under which pilots would be implemented. Says J. Satyanarayana, CEO, NISG, “Given the large spectrum of possible themes covering the whole ambit of the development sector, the large size of the country and the population that needs services relevant to their lives, we have chosen to initially restrict the selection of pilot initiatives under four themes namely, Integrated Citizen Services, Enhancing Rural Livelihoods, Transforming Governance and Women Empowerment, to take up pilots under the ICTD project.” This approach, he feels, will help NISG focus on implementing pilots that target the delivery of key public services through multi-channel and multi-lingual delivery options, and help them identify successful pilots that can be replicated and scaled up in the future. ‘Integrated Citizen Service’ projects have the ability to directly impact lives of thousands of citizens and are thus high on the priority list of ICTD initiatives in our country. Projects such as the e-Seva in Andhra Pradesh and FRIENDS in Kerala have helped to organise and speed the delivery of essential services to the citizens. Says Mr. Rajeev Chawla, Secretary e-Governance, government of Karnataka “The use of ICTs in this manner, helps the government to make services more simple, efficient and transparent thus increasing productivity for both citizens as well as Government departments. We equip and ease the lives of citizens through projects in Integrated Citizen Services arena.”

ICTD projects that enhance livelihoods of rural population have already been successfully implemented in agriculture, crafts and allied sectors. Projects such as those by ITC’s e-Choupal and the Information Village project in Tamil Nadu provide and improve livelihood opportunities to the rural people by targeting agriculture and allied sectors. ICTD projects chosen under Rural Livelihoods theme would be those that specifically targeted sectors like Agriculture, Natural Resource Management, Rural credit etc.

Says Roy Matthew, Director, Kerala State IT Mission, who is implementing a project in Kerala which aims to establish IT-enabled Agri-Business Centres, “In the future, market determined production is going to be the driving force of agricultural operations. ICTs provides the farmer a fair chance in these competitive environment to continue farming, profitably. Farming of the future is going to be a knowledge intensive profession and the sooner we make use of ICTs in the sector, the better our prospects would be.”

Decentralisation of power and empowering local and state bodies through the use of ICTs, is the focus of ICTD projects that come under the theme for Governance (Rural and Urban). Projects that empower local bodies and citizens in matters such as access to justice and information would be among the many that come under this theme. Ranjit Kumar Maiti, Deputy Secretary, P&RD Department, Government of West Bengal feels that rural India is currently in dire need of a robust communication network that would link all the three tiers of the Panchayat, namely Zilla Panchayat, Panchayat Samiti and Gram Panchayat.

ICT in recent times has also been seen as a strong tool to build capacities among women, enabling them to play a dominant role in mainstream economic activities. Parminder Jeet Singh, Director of Programmes, at an NGO called IT for Change insists, “The two interlinked factors that primarily contribute to the success of an ICT project working to empower women are the need for an intervention that aligns itself with some grassroots institutional activity that is already in place, and the necessity for that intervention to build upon and correspond with already existing habits and capacities of the targeted women”.

The beginning: Project workshop
As the first step in the implementation of the ICTD project, a workshop was held at Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh on July 8-9, 2004. The workshop aimed at increasing awareness about the ongoing projects in India in the ICT for Development domain, and to identify and ascertain pilots to be implemented under the ICTD project. Attended by over 140 delegates from all sectors- governments including IT Secretaries from 12 states, and NGO’s from the ICTD domain, the workshop created an environment where people could share their experiences and knowledge, and help translate the ICTD project vision into reality.

Soon after the workshop ICT pilot project proposals were invited from the various government and non-governmental agencies. A total of 11 projects were identified to be implemented in the first phase. Below is the summarisation of these projects.

Integrated Citizen Services Bangalore-One
Bangalore One (B1) is an initiative of Government of Karnataka (GoK) which aims to provide all G2C and G2B One- Stop services as well as information about central, state and local government departments and agencies in an efficient, reliable, transparent and integrated manner to the citizens of Karnataka, through a chain of computerised Integrated Citizen Service Centres and through multiple delivery channels like electronic kiosks, mobile phones and the Internet. Created on the lines of e-Seva, B1 will have 15 service centres all over the city of Bangalore by March/April 2005 and will eventually be scaled up to 50 centres.

Integrated Community Service bcentres (i-CoSC)
i-CoSC is an initiative of the department of IT, government of Himachal Pradesh. It aims at setting up one-stop shop information resource and service centre for the people in the state using simple but state-of-the-art methods of organising, sharing, and communicating information. As a tool for development, it aims to empower the masses by providing access to community-based information, communication resources and ICT-based applications - particularly on health, education, agriculture/natural resources, and rural enterprise development. The project will be piloted in Shimla district under the ICTD project.

Rural livelihoods

Agri-Business centres
The Kerala State IT Mission will implement this project to facilitate farmers to interact with Agricultural Service Providers utilising the Akshaya centers as delivery points. The proposed project, market driven agricultural initiative through IT enabled Agri Business Centres in Kerala state, addresses the existing gap in agriculture information flow and transaction management. The project envisages facilitating and enabling farmers and other stakeholders through Agri Business Centres to interact with Agricultural Service Providers in the private, government and non-government sectors. This platform shall cater to all the needs of information, communication, transaction, payment and potential integration with related services. The project will be implemented in Malappuram district of Kerala.

Project Ashwini

Byrraju Foundation, an NGO in Andhra Pradesh, will implement Project Ashwini with the objective of connecting rural people with experts in areas like agriculture, education, health, etc. from across the world. Project Ashwini seeks to create a platform for multi-dimensional interaction between experts and service providers in towns/cities and has defined target segments in 28 villages in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh.

Governance

Integrated Panchayat planning and monitoring system
The Department of Panchayati Raj of West Bengal is implementing an ICT solution for all the major functions of Panchayats including micro planning to promote transparency and accountability at village level. The main theme of the project is to promote better efficiency in managing various programmers and delivery systems, plan tools (including GIS based technology) for village level planning, better management of information, creation of a better monitoring and compliance machinery, and promoting social audit. The project will be implemented in 20 Panchayat Samitis of Burdwan District and 50 Gram Panchayats under these Panchayat Samitis.

Village Information System (VIS)
Village Information System project is an extension to the government’s e-Gram project targeted at the rural population of Gujarat. VIS (eGram) seeks to integrate all the projects under the Government of Gujarat’s e-Governance initiatives programs that are proposed to roll out in all 18,000 villages of Gujarat. The project will leverage the existing infrastructure (network and hardware) of government of Gujarat, where applicable, and will develop the applications for the entire gamut of citizen services for the selected Talukas. The project will initially cover 100 villages of two talukas (districts) of Gujarat state.

Improving self governance in Panchayati Raj institutions
Kutch Nav Nirman Abhiyan, an NGO in Gujarat, envisages the creation of the Setu ICT kiosk through the existing Setu centres, and developing the kiosk as a platform, which enables the Gram Panchayat bodies and Gram Sabhas to access the various ICT technology applications. The kiosks will also provide simple information tools and services in order to improve both, their ability to self-govern and generate better development opportunities. Creating close communication linkages between the Gram Panchayats and the district administration/ Jilla Panchayat is also a part of the project plan.

Setu Programme currently covers 320 revenue villages and 60 hamlets in the Kutch District of Gujarat state. This project proposes to cover all the 380 villages currently under the Setu centres.

e-Panchayat
The Panchayati Raj Department of Uttar Pradesh and NIC will jointly implement the e-Panchayat project which would be a comprehensive suite of panchayat applications conceptualised, designed and developed by National Informatics Centre (NIC), Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad. The project would seek to solve the information management problems at the village level and thus benefit all the citizens, the elected representatives, the Gram Panchayat and other village level officials, the administrators and planners at the district and state level, also the knowledge workers and the researchers.

The pilot would initially be implemented in a cluster of 100 village panchayats located between the cities of Varanasi and Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh.

e-Procurement
As a part of its reform process, the Government of Karnataka (GoK) has decided that an e-Governance procurement platform would be introduced which shall be compulsorily used by all the departments. The e-Procurement marketplace shall automate and streamline the procurement processes of the buyer organisations and create a centralised pool of registered and pre-qualified vendors spread across the world for meeting procurement requirements of the buyer organisations in a timely, efficient and cost effective manner. GoK intends to implement e-Procurement as a state initiative covering all the departments, corporations, municipalities and other local bodies within the geographic boundaries of the state of Karnataka.

Women empowerment

Mahiti Manthana
The project being executed by IT for Change, a Bangalore based NGO aims to appropriately ICT-enable the ‘Resource Centre’ strategy of Mahila Samakhya, Karnataka (MSK), so that the information and communication processes of the sanghas (village committees) and federations are sufficiently strengthened, for them to function autonomously, and for achieving the goal of women’s empowerment at higher levels of effectiveness. Mahiti Manthana envisages a steady continuum of technology appropriation by grassroots women. The project will be operational in the 3 talukas in Mysore district, in around the 150 villages that MSK operates in. Apart from ten pilot projects, ICTD project shall also be partly funding the i4d magazine published by CSDMS. The magazine will include an ICTD newsletter every month and serve as a vehicle to disseminate information about the varied ICTD projects and other ICT related research. The road ahead The ICTD project will look to upscale the successful pilots and replicate them in other parts of the country through the involvement of more donor agencies to truly make ICTs for people. Replication, it is believed, will provide the country with more lasting solutions. ICTs can enable communities the world over to play a greater role in their social and economic development. They can and will work for people, but only if we think big, start small and scale fast.

Note: Panchayat, Gram Sabha, Zila Panchayat refer to local governance bodies at village and district level in India.

NISG and i4d reserve the right to reprint articles produced for the ICTD section of the i4d magazine and website, with due credits to NISG and i4d. Please write to the editor for any request of reprints.