Dr.-Ramesh-Narasimhan-Case-study-on-ICT-Adoption - NMIMS

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Nemmadi: bytes and bites of ICT implementation M Das Aundhe and R <strong>Narasimhan</strong>
why it is pending. If they do not listen, I have to resort to
holding their salary or even issuing a suspension notice.
In the taluk office, it was often observed that the Comat
Technologies representative operated the computer on
behalf of the government functionary, be it the caseworker
to enter data provided by the village accountant or revenue
inspector in the field verification reports, or the tahsildar
for keying in the final approval. Thus, Comat Technologies
ended up substituting/handholding caseworkers, revenue
inspectors and even the tahsildar in the taluk office for
interfacing with computers. The operation of the computers
in the taluk office was carried out largely by representatives
of Comat Technologies, who moved the login from one
level (revenue inspector) to the next level (caseworker) of
the process, right up to the tahsildar. This was beyond the
call of their duty. Regarding this, Sanjay Chauhan, VP
Comat Technologies said:
This was just a gesture on our part to increase adoption
of technology, and therefore Nemmadi. However, this
was often not acknowledged and we ended up doing a
thankless job.
Further, a hard copy of all the documents continued to be
generated at the taluk office. In fact, the tahsildar was
required to approve by signing off on a hard copy of the
caseworker’s note before the Comat Technologies representative
moved the application to the tahsildar’s login. The
latter then digitally signed the certificate, which was printed
at the telecentre and handed over to the applicant.
Managing process inefficiencies
During the roll-out of telecentres, the intermediaries at the
taluk level also created hurdles. They were up in arms.
Earlier, at Bhoomi centres, these middlemen filled in the
application form, had the whole thing processed and
charged a payment for the same. They were greatly upset
when Nemmadi proposed to have telecentre operators
assist citizens and capture all the citizen information over
the counter. As per the initial design, it was planned that
a citizen would come almost empty-handed; the application
form would be generated from the system once all the
details were keyed in. The photograph, too, would be
captured at the telecentre. The citizen would only provide
the necessary enclosures, and the telecentre operator would
then send it to the taluk office. However, as the middlemen
refused to allow telecentres to begin operation, government
succumbed to their pressure, and the National Informatics
Centre tweaked the process flow. The middlemen were
allowed to submit the application on behalf of the citizen,
but they had to get a photograph of the citizen.
The urgency with which the Nemmadi system was
implemented resulted in automating the as-is government
processes without re-engineering them. Therefore, the process
inefficiencies continued and resulted in erroneous
certificates, delayed responses, etc. This manifested the
most during April–June, during which all admissions to
schools and colleges were scheduled. This period saw the
maximum number of applications. There was enormous
pressure on end dates due to limited availability of school/
college seats. During this period, citizens did not accept
errors or delays; some of them got middlemen and political
pressure to get their job done. The impact of any
error during this time was greatly magnified. This, in turn,
eroded the confidence of citizens in the e-governance
system.
Surmounting technology-related hurdles
The Nemmadi application was developed as a real-time
system. However, during the roll-out many power and
connectivity issues emerged, and the real-time system did
not serve the purpose. Comat Technologies developed the
Global Services Infrastructure that provided for both realtime
and off-line (by writing data into the local queue)
modes of operation. Once connected, the queue was synchronized
with the central database at the SDC. This
software development was unforeseen, and contributed to
the delay in the roll-out of telecentres.
Another major problem Comat Technologies faced was
breaks in connectivity between telecentre and SDC. Any
break in connectivity affected the RTC printout. Sanjay
Chauhan narrated that: We had to keep track of all the
stationery issued by the government. At the end of every
month, we had to give a report to the government listing out
the RTCs that had been issued, and even those that got
damaged due to communications failure had to be reported.
To counter the problem of breaks in prints causing
security or authenticity issues, measures like holograms that
identify the documents’ origin and authenticity were later
introduced.
Post-roll-out phase
Monitoring of telecentres
The Karnataka government set up the Nemmadi Monitoring
Cell, which received 3% of the share of all B2C and G2C
service charges of the telecentre activities. The Nemmadi
Monitoring Cell consisted of six members, all on contract
from reputed private organizations – a project manager, a
deputy and three or four testers; the team had no one from
the government. The contract employees worked full time
with the government and were given salaries in line with the
private sector. The Nemmadi Monitoring Cell reported to
the Directorate of Electronic Delivery of Citizen Services
(DEDCS), and the latter was responsible for the monitoring
of Nemmadi, amongst other e-governance projects of the
state. If the government or public had any issue with
Nemmadi, the matter was brought to the notice of DEDCS.
For complaints related to employment, training or infrastructure
at particular telecentres, DEDCS called upon the
private partner (in this case, Comat Technologies) to sort
the issue out. In addition to regular monitoring, if any
government department wanted to add a service, they
discussed it with DEDCS. For example, if the Department of
Agriculture wanted to make commodity prices available as
a service in the telecentre, they would have to route the
discussion through DEDCS. Based on the requirement, if
some software needed to be developed DEDCS got it
developed either by the National Informatics Centre or by
some other private IT organization.
Collections from Nemmadi were also handled by DEDCS.
As per the agreement, whatever proceeds the telecentre