State Mission Mode Project e-district - Department of Electronics and ...

Study Report on Assessment of the Model e-districts
Funding for entire project life cycle
For e-districts to be sustainable and effective, the funds should be budgeted for the entire project
life cycle. A typical IT project would have a lifecycle of 4-5 years, and if the funding is not
budgeted for the full lifecycle, the IT project would be prone to failures. As observed in the model
districts, the IT infrastructure and software were put up during the project implementation /
launch stage, with no provisions for maintenance and upgradation afterwards. At Thiruvarur,
currently there is an urgent requirement for upgradation of the computing infrastructure that have
hitherto become obsolete, due to lack of funds available. Similarly, at Palakkad, the project was
launched with ADB grant, but now there are no funds for the maintenance or further development
of software. Continuity of financial support is essential for implementation of e-district. Funding
for the project life cycle can be budgeted either with the setup cost or from the revenue model.
Financially sustainable revenue model
As e-district is proposed to be the backend for delivery of services through CSCs, there is a need for
a financially sustainable model of revenue generation for e-districts to remain viable and
operational after the initiation and establishment phase. The e-districts are going to incur
additional expenses in terms of stationery, consumables, hardware and software maintenance and
upgradation, digitization etc. In the districts visited, the revenue model for the automating and
sustaining backend processes is thought of in case of Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad, where capital
expenses on Computer Hardware and Software are being met by the government, and operational
expenses and maintenance expenses are being met with through the PPP model. At Palakkad, there
are no citizen services being delivered from which user charges can be levied. At Thiruvarur, the
user charges are sufficient only for operational expenses, the maintenance and upgradation
expenses can not be met by the user charges. As it was seen at West Godavari, utility payments
and other B2C services help ensure sustainability of the CSC’s, and a centralized approach might be
adopted to provide various B2C and utility services as part of e-district MMP.
Service levels between e-district and the departments, CSCs
In e-district MMP, the service levels for the delivery of citizen services are well defined, a back to
back commitment from the CSC and departments for providing these services would be essential.
Citizen awareness and appreciation of the services would put the onus on the departments to
sustain the service levels and explore enhancements. As observed in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar,
due to lack of backend computerization, the emphasis and burden of bringing the documentary
evidence is shifted to the citizen to deliver the required services in prescribed time limits. This
does not result in lesser service delivery time for the citizen in effect, as he is running around to
gather all the documents required here and there. A true BPR effort would result in the use of
existing systems and databases like land records, land revenue records, land registration
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