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Winner
Lokvani Society: G2C at the grass roots
Filing any kind of petition with a government body and getting
an immediate response does not happen everyday. Tired of being picked upon for
delays in responding to petitions, Amod Kumar decided to revamp the whole
process through the Lokvani Society which helps citizens register their complaints
with the government and track the same
 Whenever
an initiative by a government body is taken to introduce technology into a manual
process, it is a welcome move. This was perhaps the reason why Amod Kumar, District
Magistrate of Sitapur District, won laurels at the Technology Senate for his
brainchild, the Lokvani Society. The idea was innovative all the more so because
it went right to the grass roots to make a change in the life of the aam janta.
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We studied the loopholes in the e-governance projects
in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh and made sure that we did not repeat their
mistakes in our project
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Kumar decided to implement the Lokvani online government to
citizen (G2C) interface. His vision was to strengthen governance and combat
corruption. Citizens and the government were equal stakeholders in this initiative.
This system has been implemented in all 70 districts of Uttar Pradesh. Kumar
believes that this has made the government more approachable.
The Lokvani project offers services for the redressal of public grievances,
checking land records online as well as for publishing and monitoring tenders.
This portal also supports for employment advertisements and provides information
about various government schemes.
Kumar believes that the success of this project can be attributed to its self-financing
nature. According to Kumar, there was no direct cost involved. Apart from the
citizens and government employees, other stakeholders in this project were service
providers, Oracle and IIM Lucknow that acted as consultants.
Kumar’s confidence left no room for doubt about the relatively low literacy
rate in UP (about 60%, below the national average). “No matter how low
the literacy rate is, if you have a good and sincere product, it is bound to
succeed,” says Kumar. This initiative has automated the grievance redressal
process.
- Front end: ASP
- Back end: Microsoft SQL Server
- All departments in the district are connected
through optical fibre. Each kiosk centre is connected via a dial-up
or wireless link. Each district is connected through VSAT. The primary
medium for communication is the Internet. NIC has an Intranet with static
IDs and that is being used.
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Why and How
The whole idea of implementing the Lokvani interface was to eliminate the digital
divide and to seamlessly connect citizens to strategy makers. It also aimed
to make people aware of governmental help and World Bank aid provided to them.
Two E-Governance projects that had been implemented in Rajasthan and Madhya
Pradesh formed the basis of this project. “We studied the e-governance
projects in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. These projects were not successful
and we took up the case studies as good learning experiences. We studied the
loopholes and made sure we did not repeat their mistakes in our project,”
adds Kumar.
Lokvani Kendras (kiosks) were set up all over Sitapur district. Citizens can
go to the Lokvani Kendra and register their complaints there. The Kendra managers
help them log on to the Lokvani website and post their complaints. Citizens
have to pay a nominal fee of Rs. 15 to the Lokvani Kendra Manager. As for his
own monetary ROI from this initiative, Kumar says, “For every Rs.15 that
the manager earns, he pays us Rs. 2.” Since the Kendra Manager pockets
the balance, Kumar feels it works out as a profitable proposition for all concerned.
Although the process of registering a complaint has been automated, the question
that arises here is the back end process. The complaint would have to be taken
to the next level by members of the administration. Kumar says. “The entire
process is transparent. One can, at any point of time, check the status of a
complaint and easily identify whether the complaint has been acted upon or not.
Apart from that, I call a meeting of all my officers every Tuesday and personally
do a status check,” says Kumar. Kumar takes care to see that the officers
have no excuses to be laid back. “The officers are also notified by SMS
about any pending complains that they have not acted upon,” he says.
- The future roadmap seems pretty good. It is
commendable that they have been able to provide this level of transparency
to the citizens of the district.
Tips
- It could be an added advantage is if they store
an audit trail on the resolution of disputes and land records. All such
cases that have been disposed off can be used for further reference.
- This level of transparency I feel can be extended
to the government operations in Urban India and also to the education
system in India
— Jury Member,
Sandeep Phanasgaonkar,
President and Chief Technology Officer,
Reliance Capital
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Marketing Lokvani
“FM radio is big here,” says Kumar. Needless to say he opted for this
medium to spread the word about his project. Apart from that, news channels
and letters to village pradhans have also helped as did putting up information
about the initiative on the walls of villages.
More significant than any of these was word of mouth. Kumar learnt that word
of mouth holds special significance when it comes to spreading the news about
the usefulness of the initiative. “No matter how low the literacy is, if
you have a good product, people will talk about it and the word will eventually
spread,” says Kumar.
The project was completed on time and was implemented across Uttar Pradesh.
The positive outcomes are many.
Kumar feels that the citizens are the principal beneficiaries of this project
and this is evident in the number of petitions filed per day and the efficiency
with which they are being resolved. According to Kumar, the system has registered
more than sixty five thousand complaints and has successfully disposed off over
90 percent of them. Kumar adds that the government is now more approachable
for citizens who earlier had to forgo their wages to stand in a queue just to
file petitions. In the past they would have had to follow up with several government
offices to find out the status and outcome of their petitions.
Owing to its transparency, the Lokvani system has also helped the administration
streamline its operations and has exposed the bottlenecks in the internal processes.
Kumar is if the view that this has helped in putting pressure on non-performing
officers whose lax response to petitions and grievances have been made obvious
from the outstanding petitions that the officer has to work on. This has also
helped kiosk operators who have benefited from additional income. An interesting
fact that comes out of this is that some of the most efficient kiosks are being
run by women. Several kiosk operators have now become self-reliant.
| Lokvani is an e-governance initiative by the
combined efforts of District Administration and National Informatics Centre
in Sitapur (UP, India). Keeping with the Right Information act, this system
gives citizens easy access to understand and track their grievances once
they register. This initiative helped create job opportunities for the educated
but unemployed youth of Sitapur. Lokvani is a unique public private partnership
program, which gives citizens an opportunity to interact with the government
without their having to do the rounds of government offices.
By December 2004, 13 Lokvani
Centres had been set up. As of August 2005, the number had gone up to
42. Services such as Land Records, Arms license application status, GPF
accounts of basic education teachers are available online. To ensure transparency,
details of developmental works, ration allotment to fair price shop dealers,
money sent to Gaon Sabhas etc. are made available to people. The most
popular service till date has been Online Public Grievance Redressal,
which has received more than 34000 complaints as on 29th Aug, 2005 (in
about 9 months) of which 30,000 (91 percent) have been disposed off. The
Lokvani system not only gives citizens an avenue to track the progress
on their grievance, but also provides the District Magistrate an effective
tool to monitor the performance of various departments. Lokvani also provides
details of various government schemes, government prescribed forms, details
of developmental work in the district, lists of old age pensioners, lists
of scholarship beneficiaries, funds allotted in various government schemes,
allotment of food grains to kotedars, allotments of funds to gram panchayats
etc.
The land records have been
computerised and available on line at the Lokvani Web site. In the future
services such as the registration of deaths and births, certificates for
SC/STs, domicile etc will be offered online. 30 other districts of UP
have started implementing Lokvani based citizen services. Going forward,
the kiosks will be opened at the Nyay Panchayat Level to extend the reach
of the service.
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| Company Name |
Lokvani Society |
| Initiative |
Implementation of Lokvani online government to citizen
(G2C) interface. Computerisation of Lokvani centres to make people aware
of government help and World Bank aid provided to them and delivering qualitative
and quantitative information to every person in administration as well as
to every target beneficiary through Kiosk centres. |
| Project Started |
September 2004 |
| Project Completed |
December 2004 |
| Investment Made |
6 lakh |
| Objective |
The objective is to eliminate the digital divide
and connect people to strategy makers. In addition to delivering qualitative
and quantitative information to every person in the administration as well
as the beneficiaries. |
| Challenges faced |
The challenges for Lokvani are many. The system has
to evolve in a way so as to reduce the dependence on the DM's direct interest
in the project. This is possible only if DM's progress is monitored and
compared at the state level. The financial viability of the kiosks at the
village level is a hurdle, which can be overcome by creative ways to distribute
services and commercial products. |
| Major Benefits |
Lokvani centre operators have invested approximately
Rs 30,000 each for starting operations, the infrastructure for running the
centre already exists, hence the low start-up cost. Operators enjoy high
profit margins due to low variable costs and have recovered their investments
within six months.
- As the number of centres went up from 15 to 70 in two years, revenues
grew correspondingly.
- Improvement in quality of governance across all the departments in
the district.
- Reduction in time taken to resolve complaints, providing copy of
land record, providing certificates, etc
- Improvement in productivity of district administration due to effective
real time monitoring of officers
- Improved transparency and increased productivity of District Administration
- Revenues grew by Rs 5 Lakh after the implementation.
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The Roadmap
Land records have been computerised and are available on the Lokvani Web site.
Soon copies of these will be made available at a citizen’s doorstep via
courier. In the future services such as Registration of Death and Births; certificates
for caste, domicile etc will be offered online.
Stronger technical infrastructure in the form of a distributed Oracle 9i based
extranet with data warehousing which will be capable of storing records of the
country’s billion plus population is being considered. This paperless system
will be secure and fast as foundation work is already on track in the form of
Lokvani.
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