Guidelines provided by the Approach Paper for the 12th Plan (2012-17)

The Union Government on 15 September 2011 approved the Approach Paper for the 12th Plan (2012-17) which seeks to attain second generation economic reforms, improving governance and raise annual economic growth rate to 9 per cent during impending five-year period.

Approach Paper for the 12th Plan (2012-17)

The Approach Paper is a document that aims to provide the preliminary guidelines to enable the States/UTs prepare their respective proposals. The basic proposal components will have to include :

•    State Portal including Applications & e-forms
•    State Service Delivery Gateway (SSDG)
•    Gap Infrastructure - Identification of gaps in connectivity and computing infrastructure and making provision for the same in the Proposal.
•    Training to the officers of the destination office for e-form processing
•    Content provisioning arrangement
•    Manpower Support

State Portal including Applications & e-forms

The functionality of the State Portal including Applications & e-forms are as follows:

• The portal will provide information about government departments, line ministries, and web links to the various departments. It will also provide information about government structure in the state, service offerings, budget, key notifications, government schemes etc to the business and citizen community.
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  The portal would primarily be available in English but in due course it’ll also need to be available in Hindi and regional language.
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  The portal will be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and accessible from anywhere in the world via the internet.
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  The portal can be accessed via a variety of established channels, including PCs, CSC’s, Government Service delivery counters etc.
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  The State portal will be single window to the Government to business (G2B) and Government to citizen (G2C) services. The service delivery would happen in integrated fashion using NeGps core infrastructure components – SWAN, SDC, CSC and SSDG
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  The paper suggested that the state proposals shhould include e-forms for respective departments
  Content personalization and content management should be a part of the proposal component and links to departmental websites should be included.
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  A complete application for e-receipt of forms by the destination office, MIS, printing, accounting, status reporting, query service and payment handling should be provided.

NIC would be responsible for Standardization of the Content Framework, State Portal Framework and Website Design Guidelines and provide technical guidance to the State for State Proposal preparation (State Portal component & application) and its development.

State Service Delivery Gateway (SSDG)

The functionality of the State Service Delivery Gateway (SSDG) are as follows:

• SSDG will enable audit management & time stamping  which would result in better tracking (auditing) and security of each transaction.
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  With Gateway Server, legacy applications can be Internet enabled as Gateway server can act as a Web layer around them so Government Departments need to put least effort for web enabled of their legacy applications.
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  The gateway as the middleware will facilitate easy inter-departmental data exchange.
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  The Gateway will also help the Departments backend workflow evolve gradually as the Gateway acts as a middleware de-linking the backends from the front end. Departments, which do not have the complete automation or work, flow at the back can still deliver e-Service to the citizens in a limited manner.
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  The placement of constellation of Gateway Servers at State Level will facilitate getting information and doing transactions by citizens of one State with Government Department of other States seamlessly.
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  The positioning of Gateway Server and building portal of all the departments at Central location, i.e., in State Data Centre, will help in better centralized Administration, Monitoring, over all maintenance work and deployment of hardware of Web Site at optimal level.
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  Gateway has the capability to add additional functionality to support shared common services like Authentication, payment gateway interface, etc

CDAC would provide the SSDG executables, centrally version control and provide technical assistance to the States in Proposal preparation (SSDG component), subsequent implementation and necessary.

Gap Infrastructure - Identification of gaps in connectivity

The functionality of Gap Infrastructure - Identification of gaps in connectivity the are as follows:

GoI funding will include funding for minimal gap infrastructure for the departments which would enable interaction to get the printout of service requests from the central infrastructure. The State may need to prioritize the departments and services by taking into account following-

High Volume Services – Services having high volumes of transaction so that there is maximum impact.
iMMP Services – Services already identified under State MMPs where work is yet to start and which are not covered under High Volumes Services.
Any other services which the State wants to include because of their high Citizen Relevance.

Training

The Approached paper talks of training 2 employees of the destination departments for processing of e-Forms, SSDG & Portal. Employees from each department whose service will be deployed on the portal, SSDG and e-form processing would have to be selected.
Training would encompass State Portal Framework & website Design Guidelines, SSDG understanding and e-form processing.

Manpower

The Approach Paper states that provision should be built for technical Advice / Consultation from NIC State Unit as well as CDAC during implementation & Operation phase of the project. This can be built in consultation with State representatives of NIC & CDAC.
The states would have to build internal capacities to support the department on on-going basis for e-Forms, new application integration, Service registration on SSDG and continuity when the Implementing Agency exits.

Content Service Provider (CSP)

The paper proposed that the States extend the arrangement with the existing CSPs under India Portal for content support under this project.  If the contract period was getting over in States where the CSPs are not in place, an Agency can be identified if required to support the State for Contents.