Common Service Centres Programme (CSC) Review, NeGP, India
A journey through
three states
The crucial
question to ask is
if there is a gap in
perceived benefits
and those actually
derived from
such centres. A
look at three state
initiatives.
The CSCs (Common Service Centres)
are being seen as a major governance
intervention for enhancing efficiency,
bringing in transparency and accountability,
and reducing operating costs. India possesses
vast human resources in digital technology.
Given that societies like India are big and
administering them would have time and
efficiency hurdles, an introduction of the
digital medium is perceived to be the best
available solution for better governance.
Common Services Centres is the front end
of a long and complex process of providing
better governance and other essential value-
added services.
The Government of India has launched
the prestigious National e-Governance
Programme (NeGP) to bridge the digital
divide existing today between the urban
and rural areas. The NeGP is aimed at
improving the quality, accessibility and
effectiveness of Government services

to citizens and businesses with the help
of Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT), and consists of three
interconnected components of State Wide
Area Network (SWAN), State Data Centres
(SDCs) and the Common Service Centres
(CSCs), as the nodal points for front end
citizen service delivery.
As part of the same efforts, The
Government is planning to roll out
Common Services Centres or IT kiosks in
1,00,000 villages as part of the ambitious
National e-Government Plan through
public private partnership (PPP).The plan
is to establish such kiosks in one lakh villages
in a ‘honeycomb model,’ which means that
one out of every six villages would house a
common service centre where people can
avail a host of services, including providing
tele-education, booking railway tickets,
procuring caste certificate for jobs or even
checking their children’s results online.
It is expected that the CSC scheme will
generate one lakh jobs directly and two to
three lakh additional and indirect jobs.
It is still premature to tell if this
intervention will go a long way to improve
provision of government services. An
outcome mapping is in order, which looks
at the usage patterns of already existing
centres. The crucial question to ask is if
there is a gap in perceived benefits and
those actually derived from such Centres.
A look at a few state initiatives follows.
West Bengal
The West Bengal State Rural Development
Agency (WBSRDA) of the Panchayats
and Rural Development Department
has been selected as the State Designated
Agency (SDA) for implementation of the
CSC scheme in the State. The scheme is
proposed to be implemented as per the
following district wise break-up (Table1).
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Table-1

Total number of Common Services Centres (‘Tathya Mitra’)

in West Bengal is 6797. The SDA has completed the tendering
process of selection of SCAs to setup the ‘Tathya Mitra’ kiosks West Bengal
across the state. MSA have been signed on 5th April 2007 with
SREI Infrastructure Finance Limited and on 7th May 2007 with
Reliance Communications Limited.
M/s SREI Infrastructure Finance Limited has been selected as
the SCA for the districts of Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Coochbehar,
Uttar Dinajpur, Dakshin Dinajpur, Malda, Murshidabad, Nadia,
24 Parganas (S), Howrah, Hooghli, Bankura, Purba Medinipur
& Birbhum.
M/s Reliance Infocomm Limited has been selected as the
SCA for the districts of 24 Parganas (N), Paschim Medinipur,
Burdwan and Purulia.
The SCA would be setting up CSCs across the districts as per
the schedule and would complete the process within March 2008.
Government of West Bengal is working on several dimensions for
effective implementation of NeGP, be it -
i. State Wide Area Work,
ii. Computerisation of Mission Mode Projects,
iii. Setting up of State Data Centre or
iv. CSC Project: Tathya Mitras (CSCs) are envisioned as extended
arms of Government for delivery of services to citizens.

Services at Tathya Mitra

Initially, Tathya Mitras (CSCs) will provide the following
services-
Information on various government orders, rules, notifications,
decisions, etc.
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10
 Key departments that have rural appeal will be streamlined
with CSCs. Some of these departments are-
• Health
• Agriculture
• Land and land reforms
• Food and civil supplies
• Labour and employment exchange
• Police
• Education
• Fisheries and animal resources
• Services of other departments like Tourism, Power, etc. would
also be priority areas
• Information for the benefit of common man such as doctors/
hospitals, rates of agri produce, details of pesticides, fertilisers,
their telephone numbers
More information and services will be added on a continuous
basis. Tathya Mitras will also include B2C services, to make
it one stop centre for the information needs of citizens of
West Bengal.
Departments with large public interface can leverage the
benefits of CSCs for electronic dissemination and delivery of
information/ services.
CSC plan implementation
SREI Sahaj e-Village Limited ( a subsidiary of SREI Infrastructure
Finance Limited) and Reliance Infocomm Limited have started
their activities in full swing to cover the districts assigned to each
of them through recruitment of manpower at state, district,
sub-district levels, procurement of hard wares and soft wares,
accommodation at districts, advertisement in the news paper for
inviting applications for selection of Village Level Entrepreneurs
to run the CSCs, training modules for capacity building of various
categories of persons being engaged.
Media and awareness campaign
A media campaign plan has been drawn for wide publication using
various print and electronic media and also utilising folk arts like
street theatre in local languages.
The SDA and both the SCAs will conjunctly implement
the media campaign in collaboration with the Panchayati Raj
Institutions. Meanwhile state and district level seminars are being
organised by the SDA.
Haryana
Haryana is one of the states on the forefront of e-Governance
implementation in the country. The government of Haryana is
committed to enabling Internet based transaction services at the
Common Services Centres and is in the process of interacting with
State Departments/Agencies who would be interested in utilising
the CSC network for offering services in rural areas.
The common service Centres (CSCs), referred as the e-Disha
Ekal Seva Kendras in the state of Haryana, are designed to be places
where people can avail a host of services, including providing tele-
education, booking railway tickets, procuring caste certificate for
jobs or even checking their children’s results online.
Government of Haryana has appointed HARTRON as the
nodal agency (State Designated Agency-SDA) for both the SWAN
and CSC Project implementation in Haryana. Under the Scheme,
about 1159 Rural and at least 104 Urban CSCs would be set up
across Haryana. These centres would be called as e-Disha Ekal Seva
Kendras in the state of Haryana. The State Wide Area Network
(SWAN) is also in advanced stage of implementation in Haryana
and is expected to be ready by end of November 2007.
The Master Service Agreement (MSA) for the implementation
of the CSC Scheme in Haryana was signed on 17th April 2007,
among Finance Commissioner (Information Technology)
P.K. Chaudery on behalf of the Government of Haryana and
Anurag Rastogi, Special Secretary Information Technology and
the Managing Director of HARTRON, on behalf of the State
Designated Agency for CSC Scheme implementation, and the
Service Centre Agencies in the presence of National Level Service
Agency (NLSA) representatives Arun Verma, Vashima Shubha,
Parveen Bansal and Srinivas Yerramsetti. In the words of P.K.
Choudery, the agreement marked “the onset of a new era for the
Government to Citizen and Service delivery mechanism in the
state of Haryana.”
Indeed the MSA Agreement started the process of realising
the e-Governance vision for Haryana. Earlier, the high-powered
committee under the chairmanship of the chief minister Mr.
Bhupinder Singh Hooda had approved the selection of the three
private companies and their consortium partners for rolling out
this prestigious scheme. Under this scheme M/s 3iInfotech (for
Gurgaon Division), SARK Systems India Ltd. and JAK Software
consortium (for Hisar and Ambala Divisions) and Comat
Technologies Pvt Ltd and Hughes Communications consortium

Table-2

SL. Name of Division Districts Proposed Number of Proposed Minimum Number

No. Rural CSCs of Urban CSCs
(Total=1159) (Total=104)
1 Ambala Division Ambala, Panchkula, Y.Nagar, Kuruk- 275 24
Rohtak shetra, Kaithal

2 Division Karnal, Panipat, Sonipat, Rohtak, Jhajjar 267 25

3 Gurgaon Division Faridabad, Gurgaon, Mewat, Rewari, 294 28

Hisar Mahendragarh

4 Division Bhiwani, Jind, Hisar, 323 27

Fatehabad, Sirsa

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11
(for Rohtak Division) have emerged as the operators for the
scheme in the State.
Current status :
Several review meetings were held under the chairmanship of
Anurag Rastogi, the Managing Director of HARTRON to
monitor the progress of the Service Centre Agencies chosen for
CSC scheme implementation. Rastogi also held meetings at the
various divisions of Haryana which were chaired by the respective
Commissioners and attended by all the Deputy Commissioners
of the respectives districts. The meetings have achieved the
following objectives:
• Introduction of the SWAN and CSC schemes to
the top functionaries of District Administration of
Ambala Division.
• Solicitation of their support for successful implementation
through support for key activities like guidance in village and
CSC location selection.
• Provision of government support to the SCAs, by allotting
government premises wherever available at nominal rents for
establishment of CSCs.
• Introduction of CSC functionaries, the SCA implementation
team and presentation of their implementation strategy to the
District Administration to elicit advice and guidance.
Further the logo of e-Disha Ekal Seva Kendra has been finalised
for use by the Service Centre Agencies in the respective divisions.
It is expected that at least 20 percent of the Centres would be
operational by the end of July. The HARTRON officials have
been working closely with the Service Centre Agencies to ensure
that government premises are made available for setting up these
centres in most of the places.
Next stage in Haryana e-Governance:
After Jharkand and West Bengal, Haryana is on the vanguard of
implementation of the CSC scheme in the country. Haryana is
about to embark on a challenging mission of eventually providing
Haryana
12
government services to the rural citizen in remote India in a web
enabled format. HARTRON is coordinating the implementation
of both the SWAN and CSC schemes in Haryana. In the initial
phase, a bouquet of about 10-12 Government to Citizen (G2C)
services like land records, electricity bills, certificate issuance,
etc. have been targeted for immediate provision in the upcoming
centres. HARTRON officials together with technical support of
National Informatics Centre (NIC) staff will overlook the process.
In addition, the CSC Division in HARTRON is also negotiating
with various agencies State Bank of India and Department of Posts,
to provide valuable services to the citizens in the villages through
the e-Disha Ekal Seva Kendra network. Haryana has launched its
first e-Disha Ekal Seva Kendra in Chiken Village of Panchkula
District of Haryana on July 30th 2007. It was inaugurated by the
Deputy Commissioner of Panchkula District Neerja Shekhar, who
explained the facilities and importance of the centre to the villagers
who turned up to enquire about the computer centres which will
give ‘sarkari services’ at their doorstep. Thus the pro activeness
of the Haryana government administration are expected to usher
Haryana into an era of e-Governance in the days to come.
Nemmadi programme in Karnataka
‘Nemmadi’ in Kannada means peace of mind. The vision of the
Nemmadi project is to empower rural citizens, provide direct
access of government services to the citizens and bring government
services to the doorstep of the citizen.
Introduction
Government of Karnataka (GoK) has been a pioneer in leveraging
Information Technology in easing the lives of both urban and rural
citizens. One of the most path breaking of these e-Governance
applications is Bhoomi that enables ‘over the counter’ delivery of
computerised land records to farmers from the 203 taluka (Tehsil)
offices of the State.
While the Bhoomi programme tremendously benefited
the farmers there was a demand for establishing of delivery
Centres for land records at the village level itself. The need for
decentralisation of Bhoomi catalysed the development of the
‘Nemmadi programme’ of the government of Karnataka.
The state government understood that it could not establish
and operate computer centres at every village and hence decided
to establish these centres in the villages under a public private
partnership model. It was also apparent that these village
telecentres would not be viable if only land records were delivered
from these centres and for viability, other e-Governance services
also needed to be delivered through these village telecentres.
Developing a suitable service model
The Revenue department at the taluka level delivers about
35 citizen centric services to the rural citizens. These includes
registration of births and deaths for rural citizens, issue of caste
and income certificates, and selection of beneficiaries for old age
pensions and other social security schemes, etc. On an average
about 30,000 of such services are delivered annually to the
citizens from each of the talukas across the state. Since there was a
critical mass of such services, implementation of an e-Governance
programme for the citizen centric services delivered from taluka
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Karnataka
office of the revenue department would create an impact for
the citizens also. It was not possible to create a citizens database
for delivery of the above described services like issue of caste
certificates hence a blended approach was adopted. This led to
development of the software in a manner that mimic the existing
manual work flow at the taluka office. The first time issue of service
to the citizen like a caste certificate would be through the digitized
workflow process but the next time the caste certificate can also
be issued from the database and in this way a citizen’s database
would be created in an incremental fashion.
Creating a robust e-Governance
infrastructure
The e-Governance service delivery infrastructure for delivery of
services under Nemmadi comprises of the following components
– a.) State Data Centre, b.) Wide Area Network, c.) Delivery
Channels, d.) Departmental servers at the Taluka office.
Village telecentres
Village telecentres are the channel for delivery of various
e-Governance services to the rural citizens of the state.
State Data Centre (SDC)
Karnataka has been one of the first states to create a State Data
Centre for hosting all e-Governance applications of the state. The
village telecentres access the consolidated database of land records
August 2007 | Vol. V No. 8 | www.i4donline.net
of the entire state for delivery of the same from the centres. Further
the requests for the Nemmadi services are transferred to the taluka
servers through the SDC.
Wide Area Network
For the current delivery of Nemmadi services and Bhoomi services,
the State government has set up a network of VSATS linking each
of the taluka servers to the State Data Centre. Later once the
Karnataka State Wide Area Network (KSWAN) is set up, these
taluka servers will connect to SDC through the KSWAN.
Taluka servers
Taluka servers are the local repository of data and the data updation
due the work flow processes for Nemmadi services takes place at
the taluka server.
Software for Nemmadi services
Software for delivery of Nemmadi services has been developed
by National Informatics Centre. It has several innovative
features like
• Multiple modes of delivery of services - as mentioned earlier,
services through the Nemmadi software can be delivered in
three ways
• Work flow - following the existing workflow process followed
by the taluka officials
• Reissue of previously issued certificates- The Nemmadi software
can track if a certificate has been issued earlier to the citizen
and thereafter reissue the same from the database of previously
issued certificates
• In case a validated citizen’s database is created the Nemmadi
software has a capability to use the same for delivery of Nemmadi
services also
• Reports – use of Nemmadi software allows one to track the
delivery of certificates and also to monitor and thereafter rectify
the delays in processing of the citizen service requests
• Offline functionality – Nemmadi software has been built on a
rich client model with the master data being stored in the local
village telecentre machine also. This allows the application
13
 to deliver both online and offline functionality, i.e. service
requests of the citizens at the village telecentre can be saved in
the local telecentre machine even when connectivity to the State
Data Centre is not available and transferred to the SDC once
connectivity is established
• Use of digital signature – Nemmadi software has a feature
of digital signature by the issuing authority. The Nemmadi
software generates an XML of this digitally signed certificate
and displays it as a 2 D bar code. This feature helps both in
checking the authenticity of the certificate and in dispensing
with the physical signature of the official on the certificate.
This enables the certificate to be electronically delivered to
the village telecentre and thereafter printed and delivered to
the citizen
• Biometric authentication - Finger print authentication for login
and updation is used for non-repudiation by the government
officials
• Unicode- unicode is being used to store data in the local
language. The software can be customised to allow multi-
language user interfaces. Currently ‘Kannada’ and ‘English’
languages are supported
Nemmadi deployment experience
Nemmadi services were started in Mandya Taluka office in May
2004 initially with only 5 services but over the next 12 months
the portfolio was expanded to 37 services. These services can be
categorised in 4 major categories
i. Various types of caste and income related certificates
ii. Registration of births and deaths and issue of birth and
death certificates
iii. Application for social security schemes like old age pension,
widow pension, physically handicapped pension
iv. Other certificates requires by the citizens from the taluka
office like residence certificate, domicile certificate,
agri-labour certificate, agriculturist certificate, small and
marginal farmer certificate.
In the period from May 2004 to September 2006 the Nemmadi
model was piloted in 13 talukas of 4 districts of the state
and services were delivered to the citizens through about 70
village telecentres.
The experience of the pilot helped in understanding the
various issues that would be faced during scaling the programme
in the entire state. The state government decided to go in for a
phased rollout and initially wanted to start 800 telecentres at
hobli (sub taluka) level and later expand the number of telecentres
to 5000. The request for proposal for selection of the private
partner for establishing these 800 village telecentres was prepared
after incorporating the learnings from the pilot programme. The
RFP specified detailed configuration of the equipment to be
installed in the telecentre. Setting up and operating the back office
at the taluka for delivery of Nemmadi services was also included in
the scope of work of the vendor. Detailed service level agreements
(SLAs) were incorporated for ensuring both timely roll out of
village telecentres and taluka offices and so that the services are
delivered from the village telecentres as per the agreement.
In September 2006, the project was awarded to the private
partner through a transparent tendering process and by April 2007
14
about 750 telecentres were established in entire state.
Delivery of services through the village
telecentre
The objective of establishing these village telecentres has clearly
succeeded and in June 2007, about 4 Lakh land records were
distributed through these village telecentres. The process of
starting Nemmadi services from the taluka office is more
difficult as unlike Bhoomi, Nemmadi is a new programme and
requires efforts in change management and training of the taluka
staff. However as of June 2007 these services have been started
from 52 taluka offices and over 2 lakh services are being
delivered every month to the citizens in June. The success of
deployment of Nemmadi services in these 52 taluka offices
has convinced the department officials of other talukas that
Nemmadi not only improves the service delivery to the citizens but
also improves administrative functioning and now there is a
demand for rolling out Nemmadi all the remaining taluka offices
of the state.
These village telecentres will also shortly deliver various Business
to Consumer (B2C) services like sale of insurance, agricultural
service, photography rural BPO to the rural citizens.
Conclusion
The Nemmadi programme has succeeded in Karnataka because
of the innovative launch-learn-innovate methodology of the State
Government. Each of the components for delivery of Nemmadi
services has been thoroughly tested through pilot deployments
and the learnings from the pilots have been incorporated in
the solution. With the commencement of Nemmadi services in
the entire state and delivery of services through the 800 village
telecentres, the state government is confident that its vision of
empowering the society by providing direct access to government
services at the door step of the citizen will be realised.
Conceptualisation of e-Governance programmes sometimes
restrict the discussions to technology, and technical terms like
products to be deployed, server specifications, etc. While technology
choices can influence the success of e-Governance programmes
but they are only enabling factors. The most important process of
e-Governance however involves transformation of governance and
the softer issues concerning training, hand holding and change
management. It is designing of these softer issues that determine
the success or failure of e-Governance programmes and it is
these difficult issues that have been successfully managed in the
Nemmadi programme in Karnataka.n
Ranjit Kumar Maiti
Joint Secretary, P&RD Dept, Government of West Bengal
ranjitmaiti@gmail.com
Rajeev Chawla
Secretary (e-Governance), Karnataka
secyegov-dpar@karnataka.gov.in
Anirban Mukerji
Experienced professional in the field of ICT4D
anirmukerji@yahoo.com
A.K. Sharma
AGM (CSC), Haryana
aksbtp@yahoo.com
i4d | August 2007 | Vol. V No. 8