Pandemic spotlight on e-District project

Frequent disruptions in normal life on account of imposition of restrictions on the movement of people and public activities to break the chain of infection of COVID-19 have become the new normal. Health experts across the globe are clueless as to how long such disruptions will continue. This means that national and state governments in pandemic-hit countries may have to keep resorting to the imposition of curbs on normal life to prevent the collapse of the health systems in successive waves. The objective of the fresh Standard Operating Procedure issued by the Assam government akin to partial lockdown is to make people stay indoors for maximum duration. The SOP requires government offices to remain closed, except for essential services and work, over the next 15 days. Leveraging digital technology to the optimal level and keep running the government offices in online work from home mode during this period can reduce the loss of working days significantly. Keeping open the offices in an online mode can prevent the accumulation of huge backlogs of file movement and deliveries of citizen services. The solution lies in the National e-governance Plan (NeGP) and the Mission Mode project of e-District within the national plan. Assam e-District project is one such project under NeGP to provide seamless delivery of services to the citizens. The vision is to make government services available to the citizen in his or her locality through the internet, common service centres and Public Facilitation Centres at the offices of Deputy Commissioner, Sub Divisional Officer and Circle Officer.

Altogether 46 services are included under the e-District project. This list includes the issuance of birth certificates, permission for the transfer of property by way of mortgage, gift, sale, or lease, duplicate mark sheets of high school leaving certificate examination, application for information under Right to Information Act, caste certificates, income certificates, Bakijai clearance, permanent resident certificate, senior citizen certificate, various land documents, etc. During the partial lockdown period, the Public Facilitation Offices will remain closed, but the citizens should be able to access the services of the e-district through the internet. The work from home of government offices during such restrictive period in pandemic period can be fully oriented to enhance the service delivery of e-District. The pandemic-induced disruption brings an opportunity to test the efficiency of the project and detect the technical issues to be solved by experts associated with it. Result-oriented outcomes of such deliveries of e-District services will also trigger hopes of delivering similar services during disruptions caused by natural disasters like flood, erosion, earthquakes or severe magnitude, or prolonged disruption caused by vigorous movement, picketing and law-and-order situations. Ensuring data security in work from the home mode for service delivery may be an area of concern but the advancement of digital technology has led to high-tech solutions to such problems of end-to-end data encryption.

The work from home of government employees can also be utilised to advance work on Detailed Project Reports which do not have any required data or input from project areas or related to the project pending. A primary reason behind the delay in many important government projects in Assam and other states in the Northeast region is attributed to delay in submission by hired agencies or in finalisation of the DPR from the government end. Effective utilisation of the digital tools can expedite the DPR finalization work in work from home mode. Finalization of utilization certificates against the release of fund by the Central and State governments can also prioritise for work from home mode. Delay in submission in utilization certificates often affect the flow of fund for central sector projects but backlogs continue to accumulate despite the Central government frequently taking up the matter and the Comptroller and Auditor General reports bringing to light such anomalies. Poor internet access in rural Assam has been a stumbling block to achieving the desired objectives of the e-District of making available the government services.

Long queues of villagers before Common Service Centres for availing services of e-District even during pandemic period speak volume about the poor internet access of the vast majority of people in rural areas. Of the total 2201 Gaon Panchayats in Assam, about 1600 are service-ready under the BharatNet project of providing internet connectivity through laying of the optical fibre network. The disruptions in government functioning due to pandemic situation have called for putting the ambitious project on a fast track. Improvement in internet connectivity will also benefit the students in rural areas, the majority of whom have failed to attend online classes when educational institutions remained closed during the first and current second wave of the pandemic. A key lesson learnt from such disruptions is that access to the internet in rural areas, can build resilience against the COVID-19 and future pandemics as well as other disasters. Dreams of pandemic-resilient governance and education can take shape around the e-District project if the citizens have access to the internet.