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Peer-to-Peer
Connecting Chandigarh
The Chandigarh administration is aiming to transform its
operations to serve citizens better. Vinita Gupta reports on its e-gov
initiative known as eSampark.
eSampark is an initiative taken up by the Chandigarh administration in the
sphere of e-Governance to improve the quality of services that it provides to
its citizens. The project aims to bring together all the departments of the
city’s administration under a single umbrella and offer multiple-services
to citizens through a single metaphorical window.
The project commenced in January 2004 and today it is being used to provide
services across 32 counters spread across eight eSampark centres within the
city of Chandigarh. As of now, 16 services of 11 departments such as the municipal
corporation, welfare, transportation, sales, electricity, police, public health,
housing board, taxation and passport services are being provided through these
centres. The initiative has been a success from its inception and the volume
of transactions has risen from 10,000 two years back to 1.25 lakh per month
presently.
People can pay their taxes and bills—water and sewerage, electricity, postal
challans, motor vehicle challan and telephone bills. These centres are also
allowed to issues bus passes, senior citizen cards, disability identity cards,
birth and death certificates as well as land registration, tenant registration,
domestic servant registration, passport application and senior citizen pension
services.
In 2005, the Chandigarh Administration took eSampark to another level with the
introduction of mobile Sampark (mSampark). Now citizens can send an SMS to 8888
and get information about the payment status of their water and electricity
bills, passport application verification status from the police department and
so on.
According to Vivek Atray, Director of Tourism, Chandigarh Administration, “The
key objective of the project was to provide a hassle-free, one-stop solution
to citizens, consolidate interaction points and reduce the time spent by them
on these tasks.” The innovative nature of the project can be judged from
the fact that the eSampark project won a Golden Icon Award for Business Process
Re-engineering in 2004-05 from the Ministry of Administrative Reforms.
| Database |
Oracle9i |
| Application Server |
Oracle 9i with VB |
| Operating System |
Red Hat Linux AS 3.0 |
| Connectivity |
Leased circuits (2 Mbps) connect eSampark centres
to the data centre; 256 Kbps backup ISDN links exist |
| Implementation partners |
NIC, SQL Star |
Image overhaul
Apart from the fact that the central government is insisting that each state
should bring in a citizen-friendly environment, for the Chandigarh Administration
it was a step towards building a better image as well.
Before eSampark, people of Chandigarh had to visit the respective
departments all of which were scattered across the city, stand in long queues,
and make several visits to complete a single transaction. Naturally, processing
was slow, and people faced harassment due to the lack of transparency in the
processes.
The administration realised that at the end of the day, its staff were overworked,
the department’s image was getting affected and its underpowered management
information systems (MIS) were contributing to an overall lack of control and
transparency.
The goal was to change the perception that the common folk
had of the local administration. To this end, the administration decided to
make amends and improve its set-up and usher in better processes. It started
of by setting-up Electronic Citizen Service Centres across the city.
| Mobile Sampark (mSampark) services began
on August 11, 2005. This service enables people to access information by
sending an SMS. All the user needs to do is type 'SMENU' and send it to
8888. After which the user will receive a menu of service from where they
can choose the required information. The services provided through mSampark
are |
| SBILL |
Details on electricity and water bills |
| SLOC |
Location of eSampark centres |
| SSERV |
List of services provided by eSampark centres |
| SDOC |
Details of all documents accepted for
age and residence proof |
Department of Information Technology
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Citizen facilities are available at eSampark centres, and
this has changed the way in which the administration functions. Thanks to this,
the people of Chandigarh no longer need to stand in long queues and there is
no need to make repeated visits just for completing a single transaction. Having
to wait for days or weeks for a service is now a thing of the past, and there
is transparency in the working of the administration.
On an average, a service from the eSampark centre is delivered within a few
minutes. The centres are operational from 8 am to 8 pm on all working days and
also on Saturdays.
Accessing the services is simple. One can access these services through the
Web but only for services such as bill payment. For more complex services such
as pass allocation and registration one needs to visit the centres in person.
As of now, private service providers Spice and Connect are using eSampark for
bill collection. The administration also plans to extend these services to the
Gram Panchayat level.
Atray says, “The eSampark project has been able to attract the attention
of customers and suppliers of other services. Various public and private organisations
are providing or are willing to provide their services through eSampark centres.
The unique feature of the project is the Chandigarh Administration’s decision
to offer free services at eSampark centres. Moreover, new services are being
added every month to significantly boost the usage of the services provided
by this project.”
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Implemented by
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Project
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Implementation started
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Benefits
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| Government of Kerala |
Akshaya |
2004 |
The project's aim was to impart computer literacy
to at least one member of each family in each district of Kerala starting
with Malappuram. Tulip IT Services was the implementation partner and it
set up wireless infrastructure using hybrid technology—VINE in the backhaul
and WipLL for the access network-to connect 630 Akshaya centres with a fibre
backbone. The wireless network delivers a host of services—utility bill
payments, e-learning centres, call centres, e-governance initiatives, and
VoIP for making long distance calls.
On completion this project is expected to have led to the creation of around
5,000 multi purpose community technology centres called Akshaya e- kendras
across Kerala set up within two to three kilometres of every household and
catering to the requirements of 1,000 to 3,000 families. |
| ITC |
e-Choupal |
2000 |
e-Choupal is ITC's Web-based initiative, that offers
farmers information as well as products and services that help them get
a better yield and price by improving farm-gate price realisation and cutting
transaction costs. Farmers can access the latest information on weather,
scientific farming practices, as well as market prices at the village level
through the e-Choupal Web portal in the local language.
e-Choupal also facilitates the supply of high quality farm inputs as well
as the purchase of commodities at the farm. |
| Karnataka Government |
Bhoomi |
2001 |
The Bhoomi project involved the computerisation of
20 million land records of 6.7 million land owners in 176 talukas
of Karnataka. The software that powers this system is also called
BHOOMI and has been designed by the NIC, Bangalore. This software
is being used to print of land records on demand. The system
supports online updates to ensure that the right, tenancy and
cultivation certificates (RTCs) being issued are in sync with
the ground realities. |
| Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation |
Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC) |
1999 |
KDMC serves the citizens of two cities, Kalyan and
Dombivli. The project provides automated access to more than 100 government
to citizen (G2C) services encompassing public documents such as birth certificates,
water tax, property permission certificates, etc. |
| Andhra Pradesh |
eSeva |
1999 |
eSeva was among the first G2C projects. Set-up in
the days of Chandrababu Naidu, it has helped citizens save time while accomplishing
everyday tasks such as paying utility bills and getting a driving licence.
Before eSeva most of these services were delivered manually and a citizen
had to go to the individual departments. Moreover, the delivery of services
was jurisdiction-bound. In order to provide all these services under one
roof, the government-backed Twin Cities Integrated Network Services was
launched in December 1999. At present there are 47 eSeva centres with over
400 service counters spread over the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad,
and 500 in districts across the state of Andhra Pradesh that addresses about
1,00,000 transactions on an average day with no jurisdiction limits whatsoever. |
A tale of 3 ‘P’s
The success of the eSampark project is the result of strong planning and a phased
implementation strategy. It was initiated after consulting a body of independent
consultants, so that each department get the best possible solution. The body
also studied such initiatives across the world before they came with a final
plan for the Chandigarh Administration.
“Studies were conducted to understand the best practices across such projects.
Certain key considerations of the study were costs, benefits and risks inherent
in the administrative funded option, legal and legislative hurdles to be addressed,
opportunities for risk transfer and others,” says Atray. It is a tale of
3 ‘P’s—a Public-Private Partnership in every sense.
| Event |
Dates |
| Short-listed consultants, identified locations and
finalised the network. Identified a network service provider and placed
an order for networking equipment. |
Sep’02-Mar’03 |
| Identifying the bidder and finalising the Request
For Proposal to which end-advertisements had to be placed, vendors screened,
presentations made by short-listed vendors and bidders and a pre-bid conference
conducted. |
Sep’03-Feb’04 |
| Evaluation of technical and commercial bids. Finalising
vendors, issuing of letter of intent and signing contracts. |
Mar’04-May’04 |
| Software and portal development, meeting nodal officers
of the concerned departments, demonstration of software and finalisation
of software, first phase of setting up eSampark centres at Manimajra, Sector
18 and 43. |
May’04-Aug’04 |
| Inauguration of eSampark at Sector 43 and launch
of portal— chandigarh.gov.in and eSampark services at Manimajra and Sector
18. |
September 2004 |
| Inauguration of eSampark in Sector 15 and launch
of online payment services. |
18th January 2005 |
| MSampark—Mobile services is launched. |
11th August 2005 |
Underlying technology
To achieve these services levels, the Chandigarh Administration rolled out a
centralised architecture that can be divided into the data centre, eSampark
centres and the portal. The eSampark solution is based on a three-tier architecture
with a browser-based front-end, an application layer that runs on Oracle9i AS,
and an Oracle9i database at the back-end.
Back-end support is provided by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) while
SQL Star is the service provider managing the front-end application. Red Hat
Linux is the operating system, Oracle 9i Enterprise Edition the database with
personal server pages (PSP) used for server side scripting, Oracle 9i Application
Server in the middle and a Visual Basic front-end.
The eSampark centres are connected to the data centre using dedicated 2 Mbps
leased circuits. Thus, there is very little, if any, scope for external security
breaches. A back-up ISDN connection of 256 kbps is in place at each centre.
There are additional security layers such as a Cisco Pix
firewall at the data centre. There are multiple levels of user authentication
at the operator, application and database level.
“eSampark can be accessed over the Internet for making payments. Both credit
and debit cards are accepted. A payment gateway with features such as server
hosted transactions where details of transactions are kept on the bank’s
payment server which is protected by 128-bit SSL is in place. The Linux operating
system in tandem with the PSP development environment has helped secure the
entire project,” says Atray.
- Payment of Taxes, Water & Sewerage
Bills, Electricity Bills
- Issue of Stickers, Postal Challans,
Bus Passes, Senior Citizen Cards, Disability Identity Cards,
Birth & Death Certificates
- Space Bookings, Tenant Registrations,
Domestic Servants Registrations
- Passport Applications
- Payment of Motor Vehicle Act Challan
- Pension Distribution
- Payment of HFCL (Connect) Phone
Bill
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Benchmarking and SLAs
Process re-engineering and ensuring that the systems used could scale were vital
considerations and all the processes that came within the scope of this project
were studied with the personnel of the relevant department providing their expertise
and the processes were benchmarked with known best practices.
Service level agreements (SLAs) were signed between the Department of Information
Technology, Chandigarh and the respective departments defining the roles and
responsibilities of each party and the standards and penalties related to service
delivery. An SLA was also signed between the Department of Information Technology,
Chandigarh and the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) operator, SQL Star.
Atray says, “In any successful project work has to be carefully distributed
based on domain expertise and an effective monitoring and measuring mechanism
has to be put in place. With this in mind, roles and responsibilities have been
distributed to partners such as Department of Information Technology, NIC, Chandigarh
UT, Consultants (M/S PWC), BOT Operator (M/s SQL Star), Banking Partners (UTI
Bank) and mSampark Partners (Times group).”
Map for the future
The administration, although happy with its success, doesn’t intend to
sit upon its laurels. “Our thrust is to provide more services through the
eSampark centres. This is being accomplished by way of a feedback mechanism
to identify services that citizens are desirous of availing through eSampark,”
explains Atray.
The Chandigarh Administration is also coming up with Jan Sampark Centres and
Common Service Centres. The Jan Sampark Centres will provide information across
70 manned kiosks spread in each and every sector of Chandigarh; the Common Service
Centres will provide the eSampark and Jan Sampark services to the rural population
of Chandigarh where 17 such centres will be established.
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