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Volume 12, No. 1, April 2002

Table of Contents

E-governance: Lessons from
District Computerization

Vivek Gupta
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
vgupta@iimahd.ernet.in

The implementation of government computer and information systems in India has been surrounded by lot of hype. Much of the current reportage and hype is based on pilot projects rather than extensive implementation.  Most of the published work in this area is in form of case studies written by government officials, which present a rosy picture. Presently not much is published as independent assessment of projects. Also longitudinal studies of pilot projects have not been undertaken. Keniston [Keniston 2001] has also raised a number of questions about these issues.

This article looks at government computerization initiatives at a district in Rajasthan, India. It provides a view from a district, which is currently not a pilot, so does not have an overdose of resources and management attention.

Dungarpur is a small tribal district with a population of 0.9 Million.  It is a backward area in Rajasthan, has marginal farming and virtually no industrial development. Dungarpur is one of many districts in India where governmental support is crucial for survival and development of a large mass of population. Thus it becomes extremely important for governmental institutions to have better targeting and allocation efficiency, and effective monitoring of government support programmes. Modern e-governance systems provide ways for government to be more effective in fulfilling these roles and duties. Dungarpur provides an ideal ground for analyzing government’s efforts on various computerization and e-governance initiatives and drawing insights for future implementations. 

Categorizing Information System Initiatives

Government computerization successes can be classified into following categories.

• State Initiated Computerization Systems

• District level computerization initiatives

• Citizen enablement  projects

Table 1. State Level Major Information Systems Initiatives in Dungarpur District 

State initiated projects

These projects are started at the state government level where state level authorities provide resources, monitor and control the projects. These systems computerization initiatives, when backed by state government high officials have become successful and have reached the stage of no return. The success of projects for computerization of treasury and land records emphasizes the importance of top-level push required in implementing these projects. The effort and time required for doing it however, has been quite disproportionate to what should have been required.

Land Records Computerization
Dungarpur district collectorate, National Informatics Center (NIC) and Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) initiated the first pilot of Land Records Computerization in the country in 1980’s. During the course of over 13 years, the project has moved from one design to another, settling for a hybrid disintegrated structure.  Dungarpur district completed its first round of land records computerization in end of 2001. It has been a long journey for this stage, which is not yet over. 

Besides all other complexities of information system design, the major challenge to the project was requirement of local language support during the pilot stage in 1980’s. The initial software used Hindi fonts supported by software on DOS based machines. These machines were not networked and were used as dedicated machines for individual blocks. After completing the data entry in the project for a long period of time, this entire effort and data entry was abandoned for a centrally prepared software using UNIX, Oracle and GIST based Hindi support. The data entry for entire district’s land records was again done on this new system using contractors and patwaris (village record keeper).

A portion of this new software was also again redeveloped using VB and Microsoft SQLserver for implementation at block level. These block-level systems keep computerized records for providing copies of land records to farmers. Though the software has successfully completed its first round but there are problems of updating the data. The patwaris still cannot update the data in the systems at the block level from where it is distributed. They have to come to district center for updating the data. The data after updation is sent to Jaipur once in a year for conversion from unix to windows based format. This windows based file is then updated in block systems, taking a full one-year cycle! Probably converting the district level database to a web-based database can solve the problem. 

Nevertheless, Dungarpur is one of the most advanced districts today in land records computerization and rest many districts are still very far off, as the Dungarpur administration has entered records dated as back as 1950’s. In many other states of India the computerization of land records is still in process. 

There were three major problems observed in the pilot initiative.

• Lower level of end-user understanding and acceptability, confusion about roles among the staff. 

• Lack of institutionalization of project by state government. It largely remained a district level initiative.

• In a period of rapidly changing technology the pilot could not emerge as the standard project across districts. 

District Courts Computerization
District courts computerization was initiated to help manage the enormous paper work at district level courts and improve their operational efficiencies. The project was initiated in 1996 in Rajasthan by Rajasthan High Court with NIC as the implementing agency.  During the first stage the project moved in a fairly rapid pace. A Unix server with terminals and connectivity equipment was purchased and a computer center was set up for every district in Rajasthan. 

It however failed to move beyond the first stage for many years. Even today these machines are only printing payrolls in the districts. Occasionally data entry is done for cause list preparation. No serious usage of machines has taken place. It has been over five years since the hardware and systems were brought and they have become obsolete. 

India suffers from a serious lack of efficiency in its judicial system. Indian courts are choked with cases, undertrials, files and uncollected fines. This offers a tremendous scope for computerization in district courts and improving effectiveness and efficiencies of judicial system. Each court has over 100 different registers for recording and reporting data in courts. Since the fields are too many with quite a lot of repetition, clerks generally fill only few fields. They do not follow the rulebook but do what their predecessors were doing in those registers.

In a manual system, answering very simple questions on that how many undertrials are pending in courts, under which sections, is very time consuming.  A computerized system in such complex information structure can be of great utility for courts and litigants alike. Linking the court systems to FIR systems in police departments can also derive immense value. 

This project has not achieved much due to lack of clear vision and will to implement the solutions. It also lacks comprehensive planning. The current ad-hoc policy will not yield significant result.

District Level Computerization Initiative

District NIC offices have developed the applications in table 2 using software like ASP, dbase, MS Access, and foxpro. These applications are running at district NIC offices. The government clerks have to come to the NIC office for working on these applications. These applications are not very critical to functioning of offices as clerks generally keep a parallel record in their own registers. 

These applications have helped however some of the local problems. Recruitment of teachers which was a very tedious and time consuming earlier, with many caveats and litigations coming from courts have got simplified with use of computers. 

The applications, which have been high on public impact, have been the use of computers in faster information dissemination. One of the most popular applications in Dungarpur has been availability of high school results using Internet. It has become very popular and has reduced the waiting time considerably between declaration of results and the time mark sheets reach the schools. 

 Table 2. District Level Initiatives 

District level computerization initiatives are highly dependent on the coordinating officer in districts. They continue, if the district magistrate has keen interest in computerization and go off when a non-computer savvy person replaces him/her. These projects by themselves have failed to create a critical necessity for them in the day to day government and staff routine. The limited district level scope and usage of these projects contribute nothing to state level informational needs. Besides, there is little sharing of projects across districts. 

State government should create a state level inventory of such applications, standardize them and institutionalize them at district level so that they continue beyond the tenure of District Magistrate at a district. It also needs to link these projects together and create informational outputs at the state level.

Another important area of change, which takes us to our next topic, is converting its existing local applications to web-based ones. The initiative can substantially help in establishing citizen’s right to information by knowing about government schemes and their beneficiaries in their area.

Citizen Enablement Projects

Government’s primary role is to offer hassle-free   services to its citizens and help them to improve their lives. Citizen enablement projects help government to achieve these objectives by creating value from information and making it available to masses at affordable prices. These projects can be new innovative applications such as the Warna bazaar or they may leverage data and information stored in existing local applications and deliver it using new information distribution channels. 

Presently Dungarpur district does not have projects, which can be classified as citizen enablement projects. But appetite for such applications can be judged from instant success of “Results Information System” application. It clearly demonstrates that there is a strong case for converting applications to web based interface fulfilling citizen’s aspiration for quick and richer information. This information need is also visible in success of citizen services portal for information disbursement in adjacent district of Panchmahals in Gujarat. Panchmahals is demographically similar to Dungarpur, shares its borders and has similar education and development parameters. 

Dungarpur district can convert Land Records System to a web based one with district machine being used as the web server and copies being provided at taluka using an Internet/intranet based interface. This will solve the current problem of updation, reduce the cycle time substantially, and provide fast information to citizens.
The major problems in citizen enablement projects are lack of reliable back end applications. The existing local level initiatives are not robust enough to provide 24 hour service. At the same time many departments are still using old paper file based records.  Thus creating a front-end information access application requires creation of sustainable back-end applications, or a hybrid system comprising both computerized and non-computerized systems. Such hybrid systems demand more effort on the part of government officials and staff. 

Hybrid systems work successfully where the officials put enthusiastic efforts and want to prove something. These projects require disproportionate management resources. Officers who have to replicate these projects in their districts do not gain much recognition in these projects. Thus these projects command little management attention in replication period and fail. A large number of such initiatives are thus restricted to their origin districts. 

Few of these projects have tried to combine social objectives and commercial interests and have found it successful. If a viable commercial model is attached to such initiatives these projects can sustain themselves.  It also requires that state should take initiative and try to convert many small isolated enthusiastic efforts into systematic, sustainable, codified projects and project guidelines. These can than be linked to create greater value for the public, thus ensuring viability of the projects.

Hardware Penetration & Connectivity

Another dimension of measuring computerization is to count the total number of machines in Dungarpur deployed across government departments. There are 68 machines/terminals in government offices and 15 others in the education department. The talukas and panchayats have another 10 odd machines. The education department machines are mainly used for training in schools, and some for administrative functions. For staff strength of roughly about 7000 employees the number of 93 is surprisingly small.  It roughly comes to a figure of 14 per thousand of government employees. 

Connectivity of 128 kbps is available to the district through NIC, which unfavorably compares with what is available in Gujarat and other states. A good beginning has been made in providing email connectivity to various offices using dial up connections. The taluka headquarters can now connect to the district center using modem and submit their data. 

Computerization Agencies with Government

There are currently three government and semi-government agencies handling computerization of various departments in Rajasthan. National Informatics Center, the oldest agency with a district level reach and countrywide network is under the Ministry of Information Technology, Government of India.  Department of Information Technology is a state government unit, and Rajcomp is a State owned computerization firm. 

National Informatics Center has centers at all the district headquarters in Rajasthan, and state head office at Jaipur. It employs a staff of around 90-100 largely comprising Gazzetted officers and 4-5 non-technical staff. NIC has posted two engineers at each district headquarter running its centers. With its district level reach NIC is the main agency for computerization and implementation of projects. NIC officials are responsible for maintenance of district level network, act as ISP to government departments, offer centralized pool of computing resources and provide software programming help when needed.  NIC has been responsible for many of the large computerization initiatives in Rajasthan. 

Department of IT employs about 400 staff with roughly about 300 computer operators of various ranks.   These operators are deputed to various government departments. Since currently ordinary users are being converted into computer users, the need for new operators is not visible.

Comments

Government offices computerization is one of the priority areas for many state governments in India. Many of these programs started with a bang, hoping that they would deliver the ultimate in citizen services, cut the red tape and corruption, and create an efficient government, propelling growth and prosperity. However, analysts today are skeptical of ground realities. It is true that there is a huge gap between announcements and ground action but at the same time some of these projects are becoming successful after a long period of efforts, iterations and implementation. Still there exist many critical areas which need to be strengthened for successful IT implementations. A discussion of some of these issues is given below.

Lack of planning
For successful IT implementation, current ad-hoc approaches need to be transformed to a more planned approach. The past experience in computerization in government highlights lack of top-down IS planning approach and failure of sustainability in bottom up approaches. 

A major challenge for information systems development for e-governance is to conceptualize and design systems, which can be integrated in future to create a monolithic Government Information System. This problem is seriously compounded by rapid pace of development and obsolescence of ICTs. Rapid technology specialization and technological convergence create uncertainty in developing a technology plan for software applications & platforms, hardware and connectivity.  On hindsight, many technology choices for platforms and connectivity may look like serious blunders.

Replicate other successes
The IT vision and action plan must be based on success stories in e-Governance from other Indian states and from across the world. Replication of visible success stories from other places should be given top priority. It will reduce uncertainty around planning, conserve resources in implementation, and will add to goodwill with higher chances of success. New systems implementations that may fail can delay the process of computerization for years by hardening the cynicism prevalent amongst staff as well as officers.

Introduce more hardware
State government should also introduce more hardware into the government offices. The present penetration of hardware is abysmally low and makes computers something very exclusive and elite. The computers must reach the desk of every clerk, along with a good application portfolio. 

Problem of pilots
Pilot projects demonstrate what is achievable but require heroic efforts and disproportionate management resources. Government must understand that pilots are only one step forward in the long cycle of computerization. Creating much hype around preliminary success is more detrimental than helpful in sustainable, successful implementations. Government must be careful not to create expectations that cannot be fulfilled, leading to cynicism about the computerization initiatives. 

Create common goals
There are serious problems of coordination between various implementation agencies and government departments. Since NIC is a central government organization with a separate administrative channel, the goals of NIC do not match with the state government goals. There is not much ground level cooperation among officers from various agencies and also between agencies and user departments. This leads to implementation problems in large projects. Also lack of sharing among officers buries much of the knowledge generated in the process of implementation without finding any use. 

Reduce implementation period
The project development and implementation cycle needs to be reduced substantially. If projects take 13 years to implement then there is clearly a substantial need for correction in the entire project stages. The delays not only waste critical resources, but cause loss of faith in stakeholders. India is regarded as global IT superpower having achieved significant breakthroughs in cost and time in global project implementations. There is however no spillover benefit of this export strategy to our domestic government computerization. Many of these projects are languishing, becoming like any other road construction projects or social projects. The current state of affairs poses a very simple question how much is “enough time for effective computerization”?

References

Kenneth Keniston,  “Grassroots ICT Projects in India: Preliminary Hypotheses”, IFIP Working Group 9.4 Newsletter, Volume 11, No. 3, December 2001

Data gathered through interviews with officials and employees at NIC office and the Collectorate. Observations are also based on past working experience of author with NIC in 1996-1998 in Rajasthan

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